Love Hina: Doomsday
by Doctor-T
Summary: The Hinata Apartments and its residents have been consumed in a terrible nuclear accident. Only two very special people have survived. Years after the horrific event, this details their attempt to change the past and give their dead friends a new future.
1. Chapter 1

_Greetings! This story is a tasty little surprise that I have been working on over the last three weeks. The title for this one is exactly what is going to happen, so be prepared! _

_'Love Hina: Doomsday' is a totally stand-alone story, that is not part of the 'Love Hina: Crime and Punishment', 'Sailor Moon: Devastation' universe. It takes place over several chapters, so it will be longer than your basic one-shot. Rated 'T' for - well, you'll just have to see, won't you?_

_This first chapter is something of a essential prologue - it sets the scene for the events of the rest of the story. There's a fair bit of imagery in it, which may not appeal to all readers, especially those who like to dive straight in to the action, but bear with me. Chapter Two starts off with a bang!_

_Enjoy!_

-:-:-:-:-:-

**LOVE HINA: DOOMSDAY  
**_**CHAPTER ONE**_

By Doctor-T

-:-:-:-:-:-

The Location: Pararakelse Island, the Mid-Pacific Ocean, just below the equator.

The Date: The not too distant future.

The day now drawing to its close above the waterless and almost impassable 'Desert of Death' had been long and hot. So scorching had the blazing, midday tropical sun been that nothing had dared to stir beneath its savage radiance. The only sign of movement to be seen anywhere at all across its eye-wateringly glary expanse came from the shimmering heat waves dancing across the endless ranks of barren sand dunes that faded away into the hazy horizon.

The aptly named 'Desert of Death' stretched from the forest fringed southern coast of this particular isolated oceanic landmass, into its spacious, bone-dry interior. This vast and unforgiving desert covered the entire southern third of this huge tropical island, from the coast to the inland mountain range. These craggy peaks soaring high in the interior of the island were the reason for the existence of this arid region in the first place, for they effectively blocked the moisture-laden trade winds from the north and the east, starving the south almost completely of life giving precipitation from the sky.

At this time of the day, not even a soaring hawk could be seen moving in the crystal clear azure sky above the baking landscape below. But if there were any hardy life forms safely hidden beneath the searingly hot top layer of slowly shifting sand, for them, there was one small consolation to be had. At least the moisture and strength-sapping hot breeze that had blown all day like the breath from some immense volcano was now finally beginning to drop in both intensity and temperature as the furnace-like afternoon lengthened into early evening. Overhead, the blazing tropical sun was at long last beginning to shroud itself behind several multi-layered banks of gathering cloud on the far western horizon, the not too distant setting of the glowing orange orb promising a more than welcome relief from the all-pervading desert heat.

But even although one would have to search hard to find it, visible signs of life were indeed to be found, even way out here in this sandy wasteland, which on a typical day resembled nothing so much as an outpost of hell. For in at least one small area of this enormous desert, life wasn't just visible, it grew in profusion.

As the steadily weakening rays from the tropical sunset angled ever more horizontally to wash across the solid waves of sand, the slowly fading solar radiance picked out and bathed in glowing light a solitary mesa of rock that towered up in proud isolation above the surrounding desolate region, painting the massive rocky outcrop in pastel hues of orange and red. At the base of this imposing natural tower, and now mostly covered by the wide blanket of shadow cast by the low angle of the sun, lay a surprisingly large but fairly shallow freshwater lake, fed by a small waterfall near its right hand end. The source of this cascade was in turn a small river tumbling down from the lip of the bush covered cliff face that overhung the mostly calm sheet of water.

Surrounding this life-giving reservoir was a verdant oasis of leafy greenery, which spread out for several hundred meters on all sides of the lake. This unexpectedly luxuriant tropical forest clothed the gentle slopes of the kilometer wide, saucer shaped depression with the lake at its base, before fading out through lack of water and exposure at the edge of the unforgiving desert. However, with the sun now slipping slowly down behind the building banks of cloud, only the very tops of the multitude of coconut palm trees that towered above the dream-like landscape, and the rocky hills that backed it, were now still illuminated. The feathery plumes of these living marker flags were now glowing like orange-red explosions above the steadily darkening landscape, spotlighted in the last rays of the inexorably setting sun.

To any casual observer, this hidden gem lost in the desert would have appeared at first glance like it had remained undiscovered for the entire lifetime of the island itself. However, a closer look at the weathered mesa looming up high above the deepening shadows at lake level would have revealed that this tiny paradise had not been totally untouched by the hand of man. For at the very summit of the craggy, natural tower fronting the lake, the raw stone had been cut away and levelled off to form a circular balcony that ringed the entire circumference of the isolated peak, leaving only a ten meter wide, smooth sided cylinder of rock in its very center. For safety's sake, a solid steel, three-tier safety rail had also been installed along the edge of the observation platform. Into the vertical inner wall of smoothly polished stone, a square doorway had been cut; into which a solid door made of tropical hardwood had been set. Four glass-fronted windows had also been set into the continuous stone wall of this circular room capping the mesa, one paned opening facing each of the four main points of the compass.

Behind the open hardwood door, inside the peak itself, a short, rectangular hallway had been tunnelled through the raw stone. Built into the left-side wall of the hallway was a second door that led into the U-shaped observation room. A few metres beyond that closed entrance, at the end of the passage, a tunnel with stone steps led at a steep angle down towards a larger suite of living quarters that were situated even deeper into this remarkable natural skyscraper.

Amazingly, many of these now modernized rooms had been of ancient origin. The earliest, long dead inhabitants of the oasis had once lived here, too, fashioning the original, largely hidden rooms from the natural system of caves that had once existed in the interior of the monolithic, mostly granite outcropping.

Many years of hard physical labor from the latest residents had gone into repairing, adapting, rebuilding and furnishing the pre-existing complex of ancient rooms. But fortunately, the current occupants whom had situated their living quarters here had in their possession advanced laser technology, amongst other things, which had enormously simplified the normally backbreaking task of tunnelling through, smoothing, and shifting tons of solid rock.

Back outside in the open air, seated on a solid wooden chair at the very edge of this elevated balcony and totally absorbed with watching the spectacular sunset unfolding off to the west, was a man of slightly under average size and height, his face behind his rectangular-rimmed glasses and other visible areas of skin tanned a light brown by years of constant exposure to the bright, tropical sunlight. At first glance, the solitary watcher seemed to be only in his mid-twenties. But in reality, looks were deceptive, especially in his case. The motionless observer was actually far older than he looked. In fact the patiently watching man had often speculated on whether he could possibly even be immortal, as several long dead friends had once claimed, only half jokingly, about him.

Unbelievable though that idea may seem, the seated man actually had good grounds for giving it his serious consideration. For in all the years that he had spent in this hidden oasis, he hadn't seemed to have physically aged much, if at all.

In addition to that puzzling state of affairs, the resting man had his almost superhuman resiliency to harm to consider. And while he was still reasonably sure that he could indeed be killed, previous painful experience had half-convinced him that to do so would require an accident of almost biblical proportions.

_But then again,_ he thought, _I've already survived one of those. So, just maybe it really is true...? No, I just heal fast and age slowly, that's all…_

The man didn't move from his comfortable position, except for the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest as he breathed in the lukewarm desert air. Nor did he speak. He just sat there, his arms resting on the safely rail, lost in his contemplations and memories as he stared off with haunted eyes into the orange, red and purple blaze burning like hot embers in the western sky.

Despite the youthful looking man's best efforts to forget the past and move on with his life, nearly every evening the exile felt himself drawn back up to his seat on the observation deck at the summit of his tower, to watch the setting sun, and to remember.

He subconsciously knew the reason for that, too. For every fiery blaze of light in the twilight sky like this one reminded him of a far hotter inferno. A holocaust that had robbed him of his previous life and happiness, a nuclear sun that had taken nearly everything from him that he had known and loved, and forced him into exile thousands of miles away from the country of his birth.

The man's name was Keitaro Urashima, and he was the nearly sole remaining survivor of an appalling disaster that should never have even happened.

Only he and one other had escaped it. And now here he was, living in an isolated and nearly unknown desert oasis, separated from the defining event of his life by the twin gulfs of both physical distance and the inexorable passage of time.

Keitaro had seriously considered attempting to return home _incognito_ on more than one occasion during the past years of his self-imposed exile, even if only for a quick visit. The physical distance back to Japan was, after all, easily bridgeable. But there was nothing left of his old life remaining for him to return to – not even a trace. And there hadn't been for many years now.

Crossing the gulf of time – well, that was something entirely different. Keitaro had once thought that his longed for previous life, steadily receding day-by-day even further into the past by the relentless march of time, would be forever beyond his reach, or that of anyone else. _Even her_. But now, after what his companion had been telling him over the past couple of years, he wasn't so sure…

After all of this time, years after they had occurred, the brooding exile could still remember the horrific events of that dreadful day as if they had happened only yesterday. The memory of the incident had been irrevocably burned into his mind. Every once in a while, even now, Keitaro would still sometimes wake in the dead of night, sweating and screaming as replayed in his tormented mind the life that he had known and loved coming to a permanent end.

The sheer magnitude of the disaster itself had been awe-inspiring, and its effects had been nearly total. The Hinata Apartments were gone, erased from existence like they had never even been. The town of Hinata Hots Springs had likewise been wiped from the map. Most of Hinata City was in ruins. The casualty count amongst the inhabitants of the doomed region had been unimaginably horrific – as had been his more personal loss of family and friends.

Unbidden tears welled up in Keitaro's eyes as he walked once more in his mind with the dear friends who had also perished on that terrible day of destruction. The Hinata girls were all long dead, now – all save one. The sole exception being the ever-present, ever-active, ever-youthful Kaolla Su.

Keitaro knew that he should have died on that long ago day, too, vaporized along with his family and friends in the all-consuming holocaust. And, whether he really was immortal or not, that would indeed have been his fate, if it hadn't been for the quick thinking and supreme efforts of the Molmol teen genius. Keitaro owed his life to her, and he knew that he should have been more thankful at the time, but with his soul crushed by the tragedy, he hadn't been in any shape afterwards to appreciate just how lucky he was to be still alive and kicking. The physical pain from his injuries gained during their escape, combined with the heartbreak and anguish at all that he had lost had nearly broken both his mind and his badly injured body. Even after he had physically recovered from his ordeal, it had taken Keitaro almost a year to finally fully reject and expunge from his mind the notion that maybe it would have been better for Su to have escaped alone, leaving him to peaceful oblivion with his friends and the amazing, beautiful - though short-tempered – teenage girl that he had so desperately loved.

Like Keitaro had done, Su had survived Doomsday solely because of her fortuitous location at the time of the terrible nuclear accident. During their hair-raising escape from ground zero, her mechanical aptitude, piloting skills, and sheer dumb luck had had a big part in ensuring her continuing survival, too. And thanks to Su, he had survived as well. As had Tama-chan. But of all the rest of the Hinata girls, including his sister, Kanako, not even ash had remained as a testament to their snuffed out existences.

Once more, Keitaro's subconscious mind turned back unbidden to that long ago day of terror, when the nightmare had begun…


	2. Chapter 2

_Hi. This chapter is a lot longer and a lot more action packed than the last one. Be warned though - in this one, the shit hits the fan in a BIG way._

_Whoops! That could be a little _too_ much imagery?!_

_Anyway, on with the show!_

-:-:-:-:-

**LOVE HINA: DOOMSDAY  
**_**CHAPTER TWO**_

By Doctor-T

-:-:-:-:-:-

The Location: Hinata Hot Springs Township.

The Date: 2002, during the late summer.

The new day had dawn bright and sunny as the radiant orb of the slowly rising summer sun peeked up over the rim of the rippling, light twinkling eastern ocean. From its initial gentle kiss of glowing radiance on the very summits of the range of hills towering above the fertile coastal plain, the dazzling flood of early morning rays quickly slipped down the leafy green slopes, to wash over the Hinata Apartment complex on its plateau. Moving on, the descending curtain of light embraced the sleepy township below the hill, then swept across the rolling Hinata River, to finally engulf Hinata City, in due course illuminating the entire coastline in cheery, steadily brightening golden light.

The clear blue skies of that long ago morning had held the implied promise of a gorgeous day in Kanagawa Prefecture – a promise that had all too soon turned out to be the ultimate lie. For Hinata Hot Springs was earmarked by cruel, capricious fate to be ground zero for Doomsday. And of the multitudes of awakening residents of the region, none at all had any inkling that for far, far too many of them, this was the last sunrise that they would ever experience.

In all other respects, it had been just an ordinary morning for the inhabitants of the Hinata Apartments, including the much younger Keitaro Urashima, he being the landlord of the Urashima family owned-and-run boarding establishment at the time. Not that his life back then had been a bed of roses, by any means. In fact, it had been anything but that. For his younger self had been clumsy, accident-prone, and unlucky in both love and with his scholastic endeavors. _Three times_ he had failed the entrance exams to get into Tokyo University, the school of his dreams. And if all of these failings weren't disheartening enough to the constantly demoralized young man, he had also lacked even a shred of self-confidence around girls at the time – especially the one girl that he had loved more than any other in the whole world.

Even before breakfast, the hapless young man had already committed an all-too-frequent and eye-wateringly painful error of judgement – this particular one being in poking his head up through the hole in his ceiling to wish Naru Narusegawa good morning, just as she was in the act of slipping on a fresh pair of panties.

Not surprisingly, Naru had blown like a geyser. After being beaned by her hard-flung teapot, the resulting fall from his ceiling to the hard wooden floor of his room had put him out for over a quarter of an hour. Luckily for Keitaro, Naru's now dented teapot had been empty on this occasion, or else the damage could easily have been far worse – not that Naru seemed to care about his health, anyway. All that she had done after his brutal fall was to slam back down the plywood sheet that covered the hole in her floor, and storm off out of her room to regale the other residents in the dining hall of his no-doubt intentional perversion _yet again_.

But this peeping incident really _had_ been an accident. Keitaro _had_ called out to her that he was coming up. And it certainly wasn't his fault that Naru was wearing her headphones at the time, so she had failed to hear his voice, was it? But as per usual, the fiery tempered teen hadn't seen it that way. And he had seen stars as a result.

Naru never saw things his way, accident or not. She never, ever cut him a break.

Life just wasn't fair…

But still, his glimpse of her in the nude, inadvertently or not, had weighed on Keitaro's guilty conscience. And so, after the sore young manager had come to again and used up yet another two of his rapidly dwindling supply of sticking plasters, he had slinked off to the dining hall to apologize once more to the steamed up teen for his real and imagined faults and sins.

That experience hadn't exactly been the high point of his day. But far worse was still to come. Little had Keitaro known that upon his departure that morning to do errands in town; he was leaving the Hinata Apartments for the very last time.

And even less did he realize that he would almost certainly never, ever see any of his beloved family and friends ever again – bar one.

It wasn't until months after the following event that Keitaro and Su managed to find out, by way of her secret contacts back home on the Island Kingdom of Molmol, just why her nuclear reactor in her jungle room at the apartments had malfunctioned in the way that it had done on that never to be forgotten morning. The multitude of automatic safeguards built into the state-of-the-art reactor would definitely have prevented any core meltdown from ever happening, and the fact that an atomic bomb-like explosion had occurred should also have been totally impossible. The probability of that happening was zero; the very laws of physics didn't permit it. So, upon later contemplation, Su had come to the shocking conclusion that the very fact that it _had_ happened could mean only one thing.

This had been a well-planned assassination attempt on her, Crown Princess Kaolla Su of the Kingdom of Molmol. And it had _very_ nearly achieved its gruesome goal.

Su had been working in her underground lab at the time of the pre-planned disaster, and being situated in this exact location had undoubtedly saved her life. The horrified young genius was all too aware of what was happening to her nuclear reactor built into the far wall of her jungle room in the building above – the status bars red-lining on her duplicate control panel for the upstairs reactor gave her graphic evidence of that. But there had been no time for the desperate Molmol girl to even attempt to save any of the other residents – no time in fact for anything other than to hit the emergency launch preparation panic button, dive headlong into her emergency escape tunnel, and pray for her own survival. With the sound of her frantically flashing and beeping radiation sensor going off the chart ringing in her ears as her malfunctioning reactor rapidly went supercritical, Su – with the sweating Tama-chan on her head - had slid down the smooth-sided access shaft directly into the cockpit of the waiting _mecha-tamago_ sitting fully fuelled in its launch bay.

Totally ignoring any pre-flight checkups, Su flung herself into her safety harness, simultaneously slapping the red ignition button on the control panel. The already opening outer hatch of the launching tube for her rocket powered getaway device, _'Mister Home James'_, was situated just under the midsection of the stone steps leading up to the Hinata Apartments. And in an unbelievably opportune stroke of luck for Keitaro, this was the very section of stairs that he was presently trudging back up on his way back home for his lunch, totally unaware of the deadly nuclear genie now stirring in the doomed building above him.

"_Whaow?!"_ Keitaro yelled out in shock as the walkway suddenly disappeared out from under his feet. _"Yeek! Where have the steps gone?! Yaaaaargh!"_

"It's Keitaro!" Su cried out with surprised joy, momentarily forcing aside her terror as she spotted her terrified manager's falling body plummeting down the shadowed shaft towards the _mecha-tamago_, even as it began to lift off on its tail of fire towards the sky. "I can save him! Gotta catch – _Urgh!! Gotcha! Yaaay!"_

"_Ooof!!_ Huuh? Su? Tama-chan?" the stunned Keitaro babbled as the Molmol girl thrust him into the seat beside her. "What-?"

"Strap yourself in, Keitaro! I'm lifting off! We've gotta get the heck outta here, right now!"

"Oh-okay-? Aah! I'm on one of your flying things! B-but why-?!"

"_No time to explain! Goggles and earmuffs!!"_ Su screamed to her dazed landlord, as he struggled against the acceleration pulling at his unbalanced body to wedge himself into the spare seat and strap himself in. _"Put them on, too, NOW!!"_

"_Wha-?! S-Su, what's going on-?!"_

"Just do it!! Please, Keitaro?! Then close your eyes and don't look back! I'm trying to save our lives!"

Then the rocket-powered _Mecha-tamago_ erupted from its launch tube in a billowing cloud of smoke and fire, rapidly gaining both speed and altitude as it darted up and away with a gentle rotation from the swiftly receding green and verdant hill below them.

"_Sprint mode ready! Main boosters on!"_ the wild-eyed Su yelled, flipping another switch. _"Hang on Keitaro!"_

"_YEEEEEK!!"_ Keitaro squawked as he was flung backwards by the G-force of the powerful acceleration, more than grateful that he was now safely harnessed into his vibrating seat as the _mecha-tamago_ fled upwards and away on a roaring column of superheated flame. _"H-holy crap! But I – I don't understand?! What are we running from?"_ the disbelieving manager then shouted in confused alarm to his frantic young pilot, the wind speed tearing the words out of his mouth even as he formed them. _"Su, what's happened back there at the apartments?!"_

"_There's gonna be a really big bang, Keitaro – a really, really, really big one!!" _Su flashed the suddenly pale-faced and horrified looking student manager a tearful look, utter anguish on her beautiful face. _"I didn't have enough time to try to stop it, or save the others! I think that we're all gonna die!"_

At that second, a sudden pulse of intense heat engulfed their racing escape craft – a dry radiance that was rapidly increasing in intensity with every passing second! Tama-chan instantly let out a loud, _"Myu!!"_ of alarm, and ducked down under the seat to prevent herself from being roasted alive on the spot.

"_Oh, no?! Keitaro – it's happened!! Please hold on?!" _Su wailed in terror as their wind-whipped clothes began to smoke under the relentless barrage of heat. _"We gotta make it – we just have to?! Ahhhhh!" _

"_Ohmygod?!"_ Keitaro cried back to her in anguish, smoke pouring from his own hair and exposed upper body. _"It's hot - it's too hot!!"_

The dreadful, ever increasing heat burned and blistered at their backs as the still rapidly accelerating _mecha-tamago_ fled the scene, the almost physical waves of thermal radiation beginning to fry both young refugees alive. Su's scream of absolute eye-popping agony mingled with Keitaro's own as their clothes and hair burst into fire, the flames searing into their writhing bodies. The _mecha-tamago's_ built in fire extinguisher system hissed into life, spraying freezing foam into the cockpit, providing only a small measure of protection against the miniature sun being born above the doomed town of Hinata Hot Springs. But it proved to be just enough protection to save their lives.

Then, with a tooth-jarring boom, their now smoking and fiery conveyance passed the speed of sound – just as the atomic flower bloomed in all of it's superheated, radiant glory behind them. Neither Keitaro nor Su was in any shape to even think about looking back – and it was just as well that they did not. The flash would have blinded both tortured escapees instantly, protective goggles or not. For on the plateau, where only a split second ago the Hinata Apartments complex had proudly stood, now shone only light – a terrible, ultra-hot light as pure and as white as that at creation itself.

As the very hillside dissolved away into nothingness behind them, the shock wave from the cyclopean detonation engulfed the tiny escape craft, mercilessly buffeting its two charred, horribly injured occupants and flinging the now badly damaged _mecha-tamago_ all over the heaving sky. It was a testament to Su's engineering skill and proficiency as a pilot that they weren't flung from their whirling craft by the hurricane-force winds and dashed against the shaking ground. But somehow the fiery, smoking wreck managed to stay airborne, still fighting its way forward on its column of smoke and fire through the howling gale of air now rushing inwards from all directions to fuel the ever growing inferno to their rear. And at long last, as an awesome mushroom cloud of mountainous proportions billowed upwards on its fiery, misshapen stalk above their vaporized home, the two agony-wracked survivors – both still somehow miraculously alive - at last drew away from the scene of the unthinkable tragedy that had befallen their now lost home behind them.

As the buffeting currents of air slackened off somewhat, the severely injured Su had just the presence of mind left to hit the autopilot button. Then, she, too, like the also grievously wounded Keitaro had already done, lapsed into merciful unconsciousness.

Instantly, the fortunately undamaged navigational device turned the nose of the barely airworthy _mecha-tamago_ towards its preset coordinates. After reducing its breakneck speed to save precious fuel, and still trailing a wispy plume of black smoke, the strange craft headed out to sea in a southeasterly direction, carrying its two unconscious, cold foam covered survivors away from the coast of Honshu, out into the blue immensity of the Pacific Ocean.

-:-:-:-:-:-

A couple of times during their days-long flight, Su and Keitaro had awaked briefly, to greedily partake of the water and the vacuum packed emergency rations that were stored in the _mecha-tamago,_ and to try to treat their dreadful burns and other wounds with the well-equipped First Aid kit that luckily was also on board. During his very first such period of agonizing wakefulness, the shocked and dazed Keitaro had become even more distraught when he noticed that poor, brave Su had lost the use of one of her eyes. But, as badly injured as they both were, the two young refugees had been gratified to discover during their pain-filled interludes of semi-wakefulness that Tama-chan had also managed to survive, miraculously unscathed, from the fireball that had consumed everything else in their lives.

One other thing of note came to their attention during their trans-Pacific trip. The horrific burns not only on Keitaro, but _also_ on Su were already beginning to heal. _And heal quickly_. With regards to himself, this astonishingly rapid recovery hadn't come as too much of a surprise to the weakened and traumatized Keitaro – he already knew that he could somehow survive injuries that would kill any normal person many times over. Over time, the scars from his multiple previous injuries had always faded away, never leaving even a mark on his body to show for his numerous misadventures. But for the exact same type of quick healing to be happening now with Su, right there in front of his sore and bloodshot eyes – what in the heck was going on? Her hair was already starting to grow back, and even her heat-seared left eyeball seemed to be getting better! Could she actually have the same type of immunity to harm as he himself possessed…?

On his first waking episode after their miraculous escape, Keitaro's feverish mind, when it had become capable of coherent thought again, had at first firmly believed that the sheer extent of their shared burn trauma would be unsurvivable by anyone but him. But to his overwhelming relief, he had then dimly noticed that the just as grievously injured Su was somehow also hanging on to life, just as he, himself was doing. This had come as a huge surprise to him, for the horrific injuries that Su had sustained during her almost unbelievably successful effort in pulling his chestnuts out of the atomic fire would have killed any ordinary person – and most of the extraordinary variety - outright. And now, astoundingly, she was not just merely surviving, it seemed to him that the slender and frail looking girl was also physically recovering at a speed that matched his own. Amazing!

Despite his mind still being in quite understandable shock, not to mention extreme pain from his third degree burns, it rapidly became obvious in the course of the following hours to Keitaro's numbed brain that he had been correct in his assumption. With regards to remarkable natural recuperative powers, Su clearly possessed the same type of fast healing ability as he had - _exactly_ the same as he had. It was a badly needed miracle, and despite his overwhelming physical pain and sense of loss, it was of no small measure of comfort to the gravely ill student/manager that at least one of his friends would survive the horror, and that he wasn't going to be left alone in the world, after all.

-:-:-:-:-:-

Such was the speed possessed by the Molmol teen's escape craft; their makeshift ambulance managed to cross the greater part of their journey back to Kaolla's home country of Molmol in less than a day. But then, on the last stage of their trip, their luck finally ran out.

As the badly damaged, long range _mecha-tamago_ was crossing from north-west to south-east over the mountainous interior of Pararakelse Island, at an altitude of only two thousand feet, a smouldering circuit in the battered electronics of the control panel had finally burnt through. By another incredible stroke of good luck, Su had been semi-conscious at the time, and her quick thinking had saved the intrepid craft and its occupants from becoming a smoking crater amongst the rolling dunes of the sandy desert below. As the _mecha-tamago_ spiralled out of control, she had instinctively cut the main engine, applied the braking thrusters to slow their airspeed, and then deployed the emergency flying wing parachute – which, luckily, was still functioning correctly.

Even though every single movement she made was agony, Kaolla fought to remain conscious and make their imminent crash landing at least survivable. Then Tama-chan let out an excited, "Myuh!" and lifted off from her shoulder. As the grievously burnt girl automatically turned her bandaged head towards the tiny flying turtle, her undamaged eye caught a glimpse of the sparkle of water amongst a completely unexpected patch of greenery off to the right of their descent path. Su thumbed a button on the control joystick and the right hand side braking jets fired once, and then again as she tried to alter their course towards what could be their salvation. At last, the nose of the falling robot craft was now pointing directly towards the slowly expanding, bowl-shaped oasis directly in front of them.

_I – recognize this place,_ her groggy brain then realized, a surge of newfound hope jolting at her pounding heart. _This lake and…that big rock… We've all been here once before…! I gotta keep our nose up...and dodge those trees-Uhh!_

Su managed to stay awake for just long enough to see their wreck glide over the feathery tops of the first of the lofty coconut palms that were towering over the thickening jungle now rolling past less than fifty meters below. The twinkling lake, backed by a rocky, bush covered range of hills and a massive tower of up-thrust stone, was right in front of their doomed craft. Then the brave teen lost her battle against the pain, and soothing blackness once more overtook her almost mortally abused body.

Twenty seconds later, with a jarring bump, the _mecha-tamago_ plowed into the soft, yellow sand beach that ringed the crystal clear freshwater lake, finally sliding to a stop with its nose only meters away from the gently lapping ripples of water. The gently collapsing parachute had done its work, the escape craft was intact, and its precious cargo of badly injured passengers had been spared further harm.

So, along with Tama-chan, Keitaro and Su had both succeeded against all of the odds in surviving the total annihilation of their former home. And, in a remarkably short period of time after their crash landing in the oasis, a double miracle had completed its work on their physical bodies. The burned and blackened skin of both young survivors had reverted back to its normal smooth and undamaged state; their singed hair had grown back to its former glory, and Kaolla's damaged eye had repaired itself back to its unblemished, crystal clear self. Within a week, they both had been physically indistinguishable from their normal selves once again.

There had been one other piece of good news during Keitaro and Su's more than speedy recovery. Their hearts had leapt with joy and both had thanked all of the gods that they could think of when they suddenly recalled that the newly wed Aunt Haruka and Seta, accompanied by Sarah, were still on their honeymoon right there on Pararakelse Island, where Seta had been engaged in his endless series of archaeological excavations. So, their horrific loss of home and friends hadn't been completely total, after all.

But, with the wrecked _mecha-tamago's_ radio fried by the electromagnetic pulse, and with them both trapped at the oasis by unknown kilometers of hostile, baking desert, the frantic Keitaro had no way of informing his aunt, his mentor and the tiny, blonde bane of his existence of his and Su's miraculous survival. And, by the time that Kaolla had recovered enough from her burns to repair their communications lifeline, it had been too late to do so.

Upon their horrified trio of relatives discovering, via the news flashes on every radio and television station on the island, of the terrible disaster that had befallen their town and home, and knowing full well the hard questions that would have been asked of them if they had dared to return to Japan to face the music, all three had left the island and vanished completely, presumably to America. Keitaro never knew for sure, for he hadn't seen nor heard from any of them ever again. He could only assume that his grieving aunt and her new family had thought both him and Su dead with all of the other residents of the vaporized town.

Granny Hina had disappeared, too. As had his parents. In fact, the entire surviving Urashima family had also vanished, as if they had never even existed. To where, no one knew – or, if one or two old time friends did know, they weren't going to tell. Keitaro prayed that it had been to a new and anonymous life in another country, where they could live in quiet obscurity and finally find some peace.

Not that Keitaro could blame his normally fearless grandmother and equally brave aunt for leading the extended family into exile. They had not been in any way at fault for the disaster. Nor had Su, for that matter. But that didn't alter the unpalatable fact that a highly illegal and unlicensed nuclear reactor had been installed and was operating at the Hinata Apartments in the first place – a business owned and run by the Urashima family.

With a death toll in the tens of thousands and an injury toll ten times higher than that, the world needed someone to blame. Heads had to roll for a catastrophe of this magnitude, if any suitable scapegoats were to be found still alive, of course. Realizing this unpleasant fact, Granny had understandably thought it wise that the world be led to think that the culprits had all died in the funeral pyre, and leave it at that.

-:-:-:-:-:-

A couple of days after their crash into the hidden desert oasis, both scalded, heavily bandaged refugees had recovered enough from their burn trauma to be able to do more than just eat, drink and sleep. Now that she was able to work without the danger of fainting from the pain of her still severe, though rapidly healing injuries, Kaolla finally managed to throw together a makeshift aerial powerful enough to get satellite broadcasts on her jury-rigged television screen. Once they had managed to tune in to a rather static-filled broadcast about the aftermath of the surprise atomic blast, both horrified watchers had rapidly wished that they had not even thought of this idea in the first place.

Things back in Japan were even worse than they had expected them to be. _Much worse_. And the rather shaky, static-laden, long range aerial shots from the camera on board the news helicopter that was now playing on the screen in front of them, drove that point home to them with brutal reality.

Grainy and jumpy though the newscast was, it was still more than obvious to the inconsolable pair that the township of Hinata Hot Springs had been wiped from existence as if by a giant, white-hot hand. Next to the erased town lay the now waterless, cracked, curved gouge in the landscape of what had once been the Hinata River, its dry, formerly mud bed baked as hard as rock by the nuclear furnace that had swept over it. Such had been the force of the explosion, several hundred thousand metric tons of the surrounding hillsides had collapsed in a huge avalanche down into the riverbed, totally blocking off the flow of water from its ages-old channel. This blockage had changed the course of the Hinata River, sending the thousands of tonnes of water quickly building up behind the newly-created rock dam cascading down through previously dry, low-lying land on a new and destructive path to the sea.

The still burning city beyond the blocked off waterway had been shattered beyond all recognition. Of the former buildings on the riverbank, nothing remained but collapsed, semi-melted piles of rubble, innumerable small fires still smouldering even now below the sterile surface. Further away from the epicentre of the blast, a few of the stronger structures still stood, twisted grotesquely against the backdrop of the leaping firestorm that was still raging uncontrollably through the comparatively intact areas of the once thriving metropolis. Intact, that was, until the firestorm had engulfed them…

At the long-range TV shots of black spots that were obviously people – some on fire - leaping from skyscrapers as they were consumed by flame, Su could take no more. Leaping to her feet, she had fled screaming into the jungle, heedless of the pain and further damage she was causing to her partially healed wounds. Keitaro had merely collapsed with shock and grief into merciful unconsciousness once again. And once both devastated young people had finally recovered their mental sanity, neither had either the willpower or the stomach to watch any further broadcast of the disaster ever again.

-:-:-:-:-:-

Over the following months of his exile in the oasis, Keitaro had fallen into apathetic despondency, and shed an ocean of tears for the lost life that he had known – a life that he would never, ever experience again. Over and over again, the terrible truth that both home and friends had been vaporized into less than ash, hammered away at his mind. In his soul-deep misery, day had blurred into night, which had blurred into day again, and so on, and so on, in an endless cycle of dark despair. Over this dark period in his life, only the comforting presence of the ever-present Su had kept him sane. The Molmol girl, too, was suffering badly over their joint loss, and she constantly sought the reassurance and security of his presence, especially at night. At least, as they shared their makeshift bed, the grieving pair could draw much needed comfort from the fact that they still had each other.

But as it always does, time eventually heals all wounds, even a broken heart and a shattered soul. In Keitaro's case, it took months, but eventually the time came when he was all cried out. He finally came to terms with himself that all of his friends, everyone bar Su and the missing trio of Haruka, Seta and Sarah, were dead and gone, and that they were never coming back. Motoko, Shinobu, Kitsune, Mutsumi, Haitani, Shirai, Kentaro, his sister, Kanako, and the love of his life, his dear Naru – all were gone, forever. And when that happened, when his mind finally accepted the cruel reality of that unalterable situation, he knew that it was, at long last, time for him to try to move on with his life.

As time passed, the steadily mentally recovering Keitaro had done just that, though in small steps at first. And, apart from planning ways to surreptitiously search for his missing relatives, his main priority was deciding just what he was now going to do with the rest of his radically altered life.

Knowing their probable fate if either or both of them were to return to civilisation and be recognized, Keitaro and Su mutually decided that it would be best for them both to stay right where they were. The hidden oasis in the middle of the Desert of Death was about as safe a hiding place as they could ever wish for. And so, after a lot of thought and planning, they had decided to make this picturesque locality their permanent home.

Ever since their crash, Keitaro and Su had been living rough in a cave below the rocky hill, but now that they had decided to live there permanently, far more spacious and comfortable living quarters were definitely the order of the day. For a while, Keitaro had toyed with the idea of building a wooden house, using the crashed _mecha-tamago's_ quite comprehensive tool kit. But then a startling discovery had changed all of his plans. To their more than welcome surprise, Kaolla, on one of her explorations, had discovered through happenstance that the mesa that loomed high over the lake contained a network of hollowed out rooms and tunnels throughout its interior. Of whom exactly had created this complex and how it had been done, Keitaro had no idea, although he suspected that they could have been excavated by the long lost 'Turtle Civilisation' that Seta had previously been investigating.

This chance discovery of the ancient chambers had made Keitaro's mind up for him. Here he would stay and live out his life in peace and serenity, far from the horror that had cruelly cut short his previous existence. And, by staying here in this wondrous hidden world, one day he might even be able to forget…_her_.

Of course, adapting the long forgotten maze of ruins into a suitable habitation for them both hadn't been an easy task. And the castaways had been desperately short of the necessary equipment and supplies to undertake such a huge undertaking. Not to mention their lack of serviceable clothing after months of wearing the same outfits! So, in a stroke of genius, Su had used her repaired radio set to surreptitiously call a trusted contact on her nearby home island of Molmol.

The girl had months ago despondently realized that now she and Keitaro could never ever openly return to her original homeland – the sudden arrival of the Crown Princess on Molmol after all had thought her dead was not an event that could be covered up for long. And if the general populace were to find out about her miraculous survival, the very real threat of treachery or betrayal was far too great for her to risk that course of action. Especially if foul play was indeed the cause of their tragically wrecked lives. Furthermore, both fugitives were also uncomfortably aware that Molmol and Japan did have a mutual extradition treaty for wanted and suspected criminals. The annihilation of much of Kanagawa Prefecture in a nuclear explosion _definitely_ fell into that last category! So, if she and Keitaro were to be located by the Japanese authorities, not even being a Princess with diplomatic immunity would be of much help to her this time…

However, Su did have certain friends on Molmol that she could trust with her very life, and it was with one of them whom the wary girl spoke to now. And Su had chosen well – the ex-bodyguard she had managed to contact was overjoyed to hear of her Princess's survival. Until that moment, Su's now dismissed quartet of female bodyguards had been fully convinced that their beloved Princess had, indeed, died in the ruins of the obliterated town of Hinata Hot Springs.

What Su had then found out from her trusted confident had been shocking, but not exactly unexpected. Her earlier uneasy suspicions as to the cause of the nuclear reactor going out of control had been confirmed - this horrifying disaster _had_ been an assassination attempt on her, the Crown Princess of Molmol. A clandestine faction of malcontents in the capital city, Toudai, had planned a coup against the Royal family, and Su's justifiably expected death in the nuclear 'accident' would not only have eliminated her permanently and discredited the entire ruling family, but would have also been the signal for an armed takeover of the island nation. Unfortunately for the coup plotters, the highly efficient Molmol Secret Service had discovered their plans just in time to prevent the overthrow of the Molmol Royal Family – but not soon enough to save Kanagawa Prefecture from the horrifying booby-trap that had been shipped to her by the insurgents.

The plot to kill Kaolla Su had been devilishly simple. A cunningly modified, lead-lined transfer container of Uranium-235 fuel rods had been sent from Molmol, via the usual secret channels, to the Hinata Apartments. This shipment had been smuggled in to replace the spent rods from her top secret and highly illegal atomic pile, which were now to be returned to the island nation for reprocessing. But, once plugged into Su's reactor, instead of automatically beginning to remove the old, zirconium alloy, tube-shaped rods of depleted fuel, the clandestinely reprogrammed robotic handler built into the container had suddenly activated its sabotage program. The device immediately started to slide the new rods directly into the powered-down reactor core, simultaneously switching the electromagnets that lifted the control rods responsible for the reactor shutdown back on again! With the removal of the control rods that inhibited the neutron flux, the nuclear reaction had not only restarted, but the core temperature had soon begun to rise alarmingly. This sudden spike in temperature had caused the automatic safeties to attempt to insert the reaction-dampening control rods made out of Boron Carbide back fully into the active core again – but to no avail. For the override virus downloaded into the computer program by the uncaring robotic saboteur had made sure of that. The hijacked operating system now prevented the emergency signal to cut the electromagnets and drop all of the gravity assisted control rods into the core and completely shut it down from even being sent.

With the neutron-absorbing Boron Carbide control rods totally removed from the active core, the restarted nuclear chain reaction within began to rapidly intensify. Within mere moments, the overheating radioactive core began to rapidly approach supercritical mass as the oversupply of plutonium fuel rods began to liquefy and pool together at the base of the white-hot, now slowly melting reaction chamber. At this point, the swiftly building runaway chain reaction leading to an inevitable nuclear detonation had then been totally unstoppable by anyone or anything.

And so thousands of innocent people had died a dreadful death, including most of her dear friends, all because of the lust for power of a few callous and uncaring traitors in her homeland. But, because of her undeniable act of having an illegal nuclear reactor operating in Japan in the first place, the understandably outraged Japanese government had issued a worldwide warrant for her arrest. Princess Kaolla Su, Crown Princess of Molmol, if by some miracle still alive, could never, ever set foot in Japan – or Molmol - again.

But, as much as she wished it to be otherwise, the disaster had happened, and there was nothing that either she or anyone else could do to alter that terrible fact. The one small consolation that the distressed girl and her companion had was the news that the coup attempt had failed, and that the plotters had all been swiftly arrested and punished for their crimes. And, despite the horror and revulsion that the teen understandably felt at what had happened, Su now also had her future in exile to consider.

Kaolla's clandestine call quickly paid dividends. Within a week, a top-secret consignment comprising several tons of essential supplies, tools and building materials had been put together, and a secret delivery flight to their hidden location arranged. The night after the confirmation call from her friends had come through; the shipment had arrived as scheduled. A number of large crates containing their vital supplies had come drifting down by parachute into the practically unknown oasis on the far side of the Desert of Death, along with a letter containing best wishes from Su's now unemployed, but still supremely loyal quartet of female ex-bodyguards.

Over the course of the next quarter of a century, the two exiles – with a few further secret shipments of supplies from Molmol and a little additional help - had slowly but steadily built up their new home concealed inside the natural stone tower into a fairly luxurious and well-equipped residence, complete with piped hot water, electricity and a state of the art waste disposal system. Furthermore, just on the off chance that Keitaro _did_ manage to somehow, someday track down his vanished relatives, many of the spare chambers had been fully decorated and furnished into spare bedrooms and living areas, as well.

Su had done more than just help build and decorate their new home. Her suite of rooms also contained a brand new, state of the art laboratory complex, fitted out with the invaluable help of her secret collaborators on Molmol. Once she had all of the equipment that she had needed, the beautiful young woman had immediately commenced work on a new and highly secret project. A project far more ambitious and multifaceted than any that she had ever before attempted.

She was attempting to build a machine that would change history.

And now, after fifteen long years of experimentation, design and hard work, the culmination of her ceaseless labors had finally arrived. Her unique device was all built, tested, and ready to go.

All that remained for Su to do was to inform the patiently waiting watcher on the balcony of her success…

-:-:-:-:-:-

The last rays of the setting tropical sun haloed the watcher's head in a blaze of orange red as it sank below the restless ocean that lay hidden beyond the distant horizon. On the now still evening air, the carefree laughter of children rose faintly up the passage behind him, and through the open door to his listening ears. Despite his current melancholy mood, Keitaro couldn't suppress a quick smile as he thought of the joy that the youngsters of the hidden oasis were experiencing growing up here, far from the trials and tribulations of the world beyond the protective barrier of the desert. No doubt, some of them would want to fly the nest eventually, but until then-?

"Kei-Baby?"

The familiar voice from the doorway behind him broke into Keitaro's thoughts, and his heart jumped as he realized what her arrival right now must mean. Silently, he turned in his swivel chair to face the sole surviving Hinata girl, now his long-time faithful companion and closest friend.

"Yes, Su?" Keitaro then cautiously responded, his now mature voice steady and even, although Kaolla couldn't fail to detect a trace of hopeful optimism in his posture and tone.

"I've finally finished. _And it works_. So…it's time to go."

The slender, blonde haired, dark skinned, youthful woman's own voice held a note of deep satisfaction mixed with a tinge of excitement, like as of old, as she was finally able to announce the stunning success of her nearly impossible project to her beloved partner in exile. At her long awaited words of victory, the forty-six year old man that Keitaro Urashima had now become let his breath out in a long, lingering sigh of heartfelt relief. Then he stood back up from his seat and moved off without another word to accompany his dear friend back through the doorway cut into the living rock of the cliff face.

After twenty-five long and lonely years of exile, the pair was at last about to go home. Back to where it had all started – and ended.

The year was now 2027, and the final planning session for their rescue mission awaited them.

After a quarter of a century of loneliness and regret, they would either save their friends from oblivion back in 2002, or die trying.


	3. Chapter 3

_Hi, and Happy Easter! Thanks for all of your reviews. It's gratifying to know that people are enjoying this story._

_And now - on with the show!_

:-:-:-:-:-

**LOVE HINA: DOOMSDAY  
**_**CHAPTER THREE**_

By Doctor-T

-:-:-:-:-:-

The Location: The hidden oasis, Pararakelse Island.

The Date: 2027, during the late summer.

Kaolla Su had been fifteen years of age when she and Keitaro had miraculously escaped from certain death all those long years ago. She was now forty years old, though any casual observer watching her at this very moment would have sworn on a stack of bibles that Su wasn't a day over twenty-one – even if said hypothetical observer had viewed her at close range in a face-to-face meeting. Keitaro hadn't been at all surprised by Kaolla's barely changed appearance, of course – not after seeing with his own eyes her unnaturally rapid, complete recovery from her horrific injuries after their skin-of-the-teeth escape from the searing nuclear fire. And since he had proved to be mostly immune to the ravages of time over the passing of the last two-and-a-half decades, it stood to reason that she also would be, as well. They were far more alike than either could have ever previously suspected.

Su hadn't changed much in other ways, either, being now only a little taller than before, and her waist was just as slender as it had always been. The only real difference between way back then and now was that her body had grown much more curvy and mature. Furthermore, even after all of this time, the youthful woman still had a penchant for wearing exact copies of her old blue and white school sailor _fuku_ – the top let out a little more in front to accommodate her curvaceous bust, of course. To this somewhat erotic attire, she usually added a white laboratory coat whilst working. And barefoot at all times was still the usual order of the day.

In a nutshell, Su was absolutely gorgeous. And on the numerous past occasions when Keitaro and her had spent many a pleasurable and relaxing afternoon playing in the warm waters of the freshwater lake, the youthful man had enjoyed her pleasant and decorative company to the full. With the beautiful, friendly and eager girl dressed in her _very_ short-skirted sailor _fuku_, with its cut-off top and half open front – and that was when Su had bothered to wear any clothes at all! - well, let's just say that Keitaro _was_ a man, after all, and leave him to his private memories.

As the now adult Kaolla followed Keitaro into the planning room, for once the still late-teen appearing Molmol woman looked totally serious, her quiet demeanor reflecting the gravity of their coming situation. What they were about to attempt to do was not a cause for levity, for the slightest miscalculation or slip-up would almost certainly mean their irrevocable deaths in the nuclear funeral pyre that had consumed their friends and their former home.

"All right, Su," Keitaro asked quietly, once they both had seated themselves on comfortable stools at the huge wooden table, which upon its polished surface was spread a large map of the long-gone Hinata Apartments and its obliterated surrounds. "What do we have to do to pull them all out of there alive?"

Su looked suitably grim at his question. "Pray for a miracle," she quietly told him, her natural exuberance conspicuously absent as she passed on her bad news to her solemn friend. Then, as she saw Keitaro's brow knitting with puzzlement and his mouth opening, she forestalled his obvious next question by raising up the palm of her dainty right hand. "Make no mistake, my time machine will work and get us back there, all right," Kaolla reassured him. "But when we arrive on location in 2002, I _definitely_ won't have the time that I'll need to shut down the Nuclear reactor and prevent the destruction of the Hinata Apartments and the town. They're gone, no matter what I do."

"Oh…_crap,_" he companion replied, his face falling. "It's as bad as that, then? But if your machine _does_ succeed in taking us back to where we have to be, then what's the problem…?"

"Well, like I just said, it'll definitely do that all right – as far as I can tell from all of my testing," Su declared. "The problem isn't with the machine itself, but with the accuracy that I can zero in on the Hinata Apartments after our trip back through time."

"Huh? But with a working time machine, I would have thought that we'd have all the time in the world to prevent this disaster if we go back to before it even happened?!" Keitaro declared, now looking even more confused than he had a moment ago. "Maybe you'd best start at the beginning, Su, and tell me exactly why you won't have enough time to stop it?"

"Yep, all righty. It'll be much easier for you to understand the problem if I do just that. Listen, Keitaro, as you know, the only reason that I can devise in the first place, a time machine capable of travelling back to the Hinata Apartments exactly twenty-five years ago, is because of the atomic explosion itself. The explosion was so powerful; it actually affected the flow of time as well, and it even effused the fabric of space-time with subatomic and quantum particles _backwards_ through time for several minutes before the explosive event had even occurred! These particles are now stuck there as a permanent part of the time stream, ya see?"

"Um…_maybe…? _I'm nowhere near the Physicist that you are, Su._"_

"You don't see? Curses! Ah, well, I'd best keep it simple and cut to the chase, then. Okay, my realization that this had happened was key to my research. This cloud of subatomic tachyon particles created an energy spike that the sensors of my machine can home in on, ensuring that we arrive back at the Hinata Apartments on the correct day, at the correct location and at the correct time. Without this energy flare beacon for my machine to trace back to its source, going on this mission would be a total waste of our time, so to speak. If we attempted to do so without it to guide us, we'd just appear somewhere back in time at any old random date – certainly decades, and maybe even centuries before the explosion had even happened. Not to mention the physical distance factor – without this beacon we might find ourselves rematerialized kilometers away from where we want to be, maybe even out at sea – or not even back in Japan at all!"

"That bit I get," Keitaro affirmed, his eyes lighting up with sudden understanding. "Your time machine will home in on the energy from the atomic explosion like a ship heading for a lighthouse on a pitch black night, right?"

"Yeah, exactly, Kei-baby," Su beamed. "Good analogy! But there's a bit more to us pulling off this rescue than just being able to do that, I'm afraid…"

"Carry on. I'm all ears."

"Okies. So listen up, 'cause this is the tricky bit. Since it would be absolute madness for us to rematerialize at the apartments right in the middle of the nuclear blast, I have managed – by way of some _incredibly_ complex calculations - to stretch our time of arrival back to two minutes before the explosion takes place. I can't arrive on location any sooner than that, not without the almost certain probability of us missing our target entirely, darn it! If I could, I'd take us back another ten or twenty minutes further in time on site, and that would have given me enough extra breathing space to safely shut down the reactor before it even started to go haywire, and this whole catastrophe would have been prevented from even happening. But the laws of physics don't allow me to do that with this technology, so-?" She shrugged her shoulders helplessly. "Two minutes is all that we've got to work with – and is _all_ that we're _ever_ gonna have to work with, sorry…!"

"_Damn, damn, damn!"_ Keitaro cursed, smiting the tabletop at each word with his right fist. "So…Hinata Hot Springs really is doomed, then? But, even though we're gonna be landing your machine smack-dab in the middle of the apartments, can we even save any of our friends _there_ in such a short period of time? If you can't shut down your reactor before the explosion, Su, then that's the only other way we've got to keep them alive!"

"I concur," the Molmol woman agreed. "Good call, Captain."

"You do? Good! Ah - okay then, Su, _think!_ Do you know where the other girls were situated at the time?" he anxiously prompted her. "And if they were all close enough to where we land this thing of yours, do we have the time to evacuate them all that way, and at least save their lives?" _Oh, please, please, please let Su give me some good news here, at least?!_ His mind pleaded. _I just couldn't bear to watch them all die for a second time…!_

"Hmmm? _Maybe_…to both of your questions, Kei-Baby," Kaolla slowly answered, frowning thoughtfully as she gave her reply. "But the only person at the apartments that I knew the location of for sure back then was Naru. She was up in my room calling me to lunch at the time of the detonation. It was her turn to make it, you see. As for the others, I'm pretty positive that Shinobu was in the laundry and Motoko was on the outdoor washing platform. Kitsune could have either been in the dining hall already, in the downstairs lobby on the couch, or in her room, but I've no way to know for sure… I'm just guessing. As for Mutsumi and Kanako, who knows?"

"But you have a photographic memory, don't you?" Keitaro anxiously reminded her. "So even though it's now years later, surely you still can remember where they all were at that time, back then?!"

"Yep. Normally, yes. But I can't remember what I don't already know. I never _knew_ the exact location of the others because I was in my underground lab at the time! I'm sorry."

"Oh? All right," Keitaro sighed, slumping forward in his seat with worried resignation. "I apologize for jumping to conclusions just then, Su. But this means what for our plan, exactly…?"

"I'm so sorry about what I have to tell you now, too, Keitaro, but…there's no-way that we can pull all of our friends out of the Hinata Apartments in time without knowing _exactly_ where they were. We have two minutes on location, _max_. That is nowhere enough time for me to even start to destroy the hijacker virus and shut down my reactor, let alone round up all of our friends and get them back to my time machine. We can probably warn them about what's going to happen, yes, but all that would do is panic everybody. And getting them all to flee on foot isn't an option, either. This is an atomic detonation we're talking about here – there's no way that any of them could get far enough away from the apartments to survive it, even with much more advance warning than we could give them."

"Damn! So you're saying that whatever we do by way of a rescue attempt is nothing more than a waste of time, after all?" Keitaro burst out, his voice rising in frustrated anger. The thought of coming so far after all of these years, and then to be pipped at the final hurdle – this was a cruel and a bitter pill to have to swallow. "Even if we go back there to try to save them, all of the other girls are still gonna die anyway, no matter what we try to do to avert it?!"

"No necessarily, Keitaro," Su hurriedly reassured him. "I do know for sure where Naru was situated at the time, remember? And maybe Motoko and Shinobu, too. Don't forget that we're gonna land right next to Naru in my room on our arrival, and if we move fast, we may be able to save both of those others, as well as her. But that's a _big_ maybe, Keitaro…"

"Hey! What if we land your machine on the outdoor platform?" Keitaro asked, his eyes lighting up behind his glasses and his tone optimistic again as he found a possible solution to their dilemma. "If you are right and Motoko _is_ there, we can save her first! And your room with Naru in it is only one floor down, so you can haul her out of there, while I run for the laundry room to save Shinobu!"

"Nah, I've already thought of that, and it's not a goer," the Molmol beauty regretfully informed him, squashing Keitaro's hopes before they could be raised too high. "The wooden platform's not strong enough to hold the weight of my machine," she pointed out to him. "And neither is the roof. In fact, the only places that I'm willing to risk landing us inside the apartments themselves are either on the reinforced floor of my own third floor room, in my old underground laboratory, or just inside the front doors of the first floor lobby."

"I see your point," Keitaro sighed, his face falling again. "It's no use being able to go back and save the girls if the floor that we land on collapses under the weight of your time machine, and it gets damaged in the process. If that was to happen, we _all_ die – us, as well as them! Well…our younger selves will still escape, of course, but…?"

"_Exactly,"_ Su emphasized. "We'd be right back where we started again, in an endless loop of failure! So I suggest that we stick to the original plan and land in my room. We do know for sure that Naru's there, and Motoko and Shinobu _should_ be close enough to that location for us to get them back to my time machine before we have to get the heck out of there!"

"But what about Kitsune? And Mutsumi? Kanako and Kuro…?"

"I'm sorry, Keitaro. Unless we stumble upon one or more of them during our rescue attempt, they're all goners, no matter _what_ we do."

"No! I can't just leave them all behind to die, Su – _I just can't! _There's _got_ to be a way?!_"_

"If only we had more time?!" Kaolla cursed, slamming the palms of her own hands down upon the tabletop. "But we don't. Even if I had some way to forewarn Kitsune and the others of what was about to happen, there's no way that she or anyone else could run far enough to escape the blast in the minute or two before the reactor goes up…_hey!_ Wait a minute…?"

"What is it, Su?" Keitaro urgently pressed the thoughtful-looking, youthful woman, his own eyes wide with desperate appeal. "_Please _tell me that you've come up with another one of your brilliant ideas to save the other girls that'll actually work?"

"Maybe, Keitaro. Just maybe?! They sure can't run fast enough to escape on their own, but if I can get a bit of special aid to them all in time…?"

"Special aid? You mean-?"

"Yep," Su confirmed, after Keitaro had outlined his spur-of-the-moment thought, which was identical to her own idea. "Listen, Keitaro, even with this new equipment we're now going to be taking, it's still a _very_ long shot that anyone other than Naru, and maybe Motoko and Shinobu will manage to survive," she then warned him. "But I'm sure you'll agree that even a faint hope is better than no hope at all. Lemme get on to building these thingies right away, and then I'll get on to working out the escape trajectory that'll give any of the others that they find the best chance at survival!"

"You got it," Keitaro concurred, now sounding far more optimistic that they actually had a realistic chance of pulling off their daring rescue after all. "Hey, it's getting pretty late? I'd best go put the kids to bed before they tear up our living room again, and leave you in peace to work. So, how long do you estimate that it'll take you to build these new gizmos of yours?"

"Not build, I'll just need to heavily modify a few of our existing packs. And with a stroke of luck, they'll all be done by tomorrow lunchtime," Su told him. "And then…well, it's showtime."

_Showtime_, Keitaro's mind repeated over and over to itself as he made his way back up the smoothly polished rock stairs towards the spacious lounge in the suite of rooms above, where the younger members of his family were happily playing. _Naru. Motoko. Shinobu. Kitsune. Mutsumi. Kanako… At long last, Su and I are coming home to you all._

_And we will save you. We will! We'll be a family again, living happily until the end of our days here on this island! At last. At last!_

_I swear, I'll save you all, or die trying!_

-:-:-:-:-:-

Up in the spacious living area, the scene was just as rowdy as Keitaro had imagined that it would be. The two seven year old twins - a girl and a boy - were chasing each other with loud, shrill and excited voices all over, around and across the very expensive, four-seater settee of Molmol design. A two-year-older carbon copy of the younger boy heaved silk cushions at the rambunctious pair, whilst yelling his head off in an equally loud voice. In total contrast to her siblings, the youngest girl, a toddler of about four, was sitting quietly on a thick floor rug, totally enthralled in watching a 3-D anime program on the almost three-meter wide holovision set that was built into the opposing wall.

"_Hoy!!"_ Keitaro hollered out as he strode into the scene of chaos, a look of disapproval on his face. "Masayuki! Kimiaki! Naru! Cut it out, right now! Why can't you be as quiet as little Shinobu? And where's little Motoko?"

"Sorry, Dad," the eldest of the boys apologised, in English, as the twin miscreants, totally ignoring their father's orders, ran off laughing towards the hallway that led to their rooms. "I _told_ Kimiaki and Naru not to climb on the sofa, but they wouldn't listen to me."

"Figures?!" Keitaro growled, using English as well. "So where's Motoko got to, Masayuki? She isn't still practising her _kata's_ outside on the beach, is she?"

"No, she's in her room, Dad. She said something about wanting to look _yet again_ at the picture book of old photos of that lady she was named after, I think?"

Keitaro sighed at his oldest son's words, and an unbidden tear appeared in his eye at the still painful memory of the fate that had befallen the original bearer of that name. The six-year-old Motoko Urashima had always been fascinated by the revelation that she had been named after one of her father's closest friends, and the fact that the original Motoko Aoyama had been tall, beautiful and an outstanding martial artist to boot had sealed the deal as far as the impressionable young girl was concerned. And the tiny, aspiring martial artist knew that the most impressive description and deeds of the legendary_ Shinmei-ryū_ girl to be nothing less than the pure, unvarnished truth, for she had actually viewed with her own eyes, real, genuine photographs of her long dead hero.

By an incredible stroke of good fortune, Keitaro had been carrying his digital camera in his pocket on the long-ago day of doom, and it had somehow survived unscathed during their escape from the hellfire that had consumed his previous existence. In an even bigger stroke of luck, his camera had at the time been wrapped in an X-Ray-proof bag, like those used at airports, which had protected it from any dangerous radiation. For in the camera's memory card had been hundreds of digital pictures of himself, Su, and the other girls from his previous life at the vaporized Hinata Apartments. Once Su had acquired the necessary equipment during the furnishing of her new lab, she had made time to print out hard copies of all of these irreplaceable photographs onto special photographic paper. These, she had then mounted in protective frames on the walls of a small storage room near her laboratory, which she had dedicated as a shrine to her long lost friends.

All of which had meant that little Motoko Urashima knew exactly what her idol had looked like from the very beginning. The child now carried a burning desire to grow up to be exactly the same as her deceased hero and namesake, and had even started carrying around a tiny wooden copy of a practise _bokken_ with her wherever she went.

"All right. You'd best go and tell them all to start getting ready for bed," the now mollified Keitaro told his eldest boy. "And if they give you any cheek, remind them that several birthdays are coming up in the next month or so, and that your mother and I have real short memories of the birth dates of children who misbehave."

The boy grinned. "Yes, Dad. I'm on to it!"

"And _you_ get ready to go to bed, as well. It's way past your bedtime, too, Masayuki."

"_Awww?!"_

"Hey, isn't _your_ birthday next month?" Keitaro pondered, a thoughtful frown appearing on his face. "And you wanted that new hover-bike for it, too? No, no, I guess not-?"

"_Whoops! Bye, Dad!"_

As his nine-year-old son raced from the room, the boy nearly ran into yet another member of Keitaro's very young and numerous family, this one being an extremely beautiful young woman of quite undeterminable age, who had just appeared at the doorway. After making his hurried apologies to the startled looking newcomer, the hyperactive boy disappeared from view, leaving the young woman to shake her head with a tolerant grin after him. Then, with an even warmer smile at her elder, she moved gracefully across the carpeted floor and took a seat on the settee – which, despite the best efforts of the twins, had somehow remained undamaged.

"So you're really going to do this, then?" the slightly shy looking, dark-blue-haired girl asked her still remarkably youthful-looking senior as Keitaro slumped himself down onto the sofa next to her. Like the younger children had earlier, she was also speaking to him in English. "You both are really going to risk your lives travelling back through time twenty-five years to try to change history and save the Hinata girls…?"

"Yes, Sweetie. I am," he replied, giving her a hug. "And, yes, Su is, too. I'm sorry if our going is causing you distress. Make no mistake, we are under no illusion about just how dangerous our mission is going to be, but it's something that we just have to do." Keitaro reached up to fondly ruffle her hair, and then gently brush a strand of dark blue hair out of her suddenly tearing left eye. "I know that your birthday is coming up in November, which means that it's been what – almost twelve years since you blessed Su and I with your arrival?" he continued. "I also know that you're mature enough to understand why we have to do this. So, please don't cry?"

"Yes, I do understand," She sniffed, staring at him with her soulful eyes of intense blue. "But I love you both so much, and if anything were to happen to either of you-?! You're my par-!"

"_Hey? Hey? Hey?"_ Keitaro cut his tearful younger family member off in mid-sentence, smiling warmly and reassuringly at her worried face. Her skin may have been the exact same color as Su's, but her eyes – they looked so much like those of the long dead Shinobu that the still aching memory of her loss brought a lump to his throat. "And nothing bad's going to happen to either of us, all right? And we're going to be using a time machine, remember, so we'll be back here again before you'll even have time to miss us!"

"_You promise…?!"_ She sobbed, hugging him tightly again.

"I promise."


	4. Chapter 4

_Heyo! Sorry about the wait for this chapter. The next update will be a lot quicker._

_Read on!_

-:-:-:-:-:-

**LOVE HINA: DOOMSDAY  
**_**CHAPTER FOUR**_

By Doctor-T

-:-:-:-:-:-

The Location: The hidden oasis, Pararakelse Island.

The Date: 2027, the next day, just after lunchtime.

Despite the precautions that Keitaro had been taking to keep what he and Su were doing a secret from his younger children, his efforts at concealment proved to have been in vain. Apart from Su, of course, only one other member of his family was supposed to have known that the pair was in the final stages of preparation for their dangerous time travel mission. But, to Keitaro's chagrin and Su's amusement, right on schedule, all of the kids had appeared in the hanger area - which was built into the hilltop immediately behind their mesa home – just as he and Su had commenced attaching the extra equipment that she had been working on, to their supposedly top secret time machine.

As he watched his children pouring into the hanger, the now resigned Keitaro let out a loud sigh as he realized that their secret getting out was, after all, only to be expected around here. And now that his family had shown up, Keitaro figured that the only thing that he could do at this late stage in the proceedings was to try to keep the excited kids from interrupting their launch preparations too much. But with something as exciting as a real, obviously imminent time travel mission about to happen right under their collective noses, not even the best efforts of their increasingly wound up father could keep his multitude of offspring out of both potential danger, and their hair.

"Hoy! Masayuki!" the exasperated Keitaro was at that moment yelling to his eldest boy, whom had been hurriedly tasked by him to help restore some semblance of order amongst his younger siblings. "Get Naru and Kimiaki off the launch pad! Motoko! Stop swinging on that power cable! And why's Shinobu crying? _Masayuki!!"_

"I'm trying, Dad, but they aren't listening to me!" his oldest son protested, even as he tried to keep little Shinobu from bawling her eyes out because her replica 'Liddo-kun' plushy that she was toting had been squirted with oil from the lube gun that Kimiaki was waving around as he chased after his twin sister. "And I gotta look after Shinobu, see?"

"Ohh…?! All right_. Motoko! Stop swinging on that, I said!"_

With his main authority figure now distracted, the boy switched his eager gaze from his father to Su. "So are you really gonna launch this thing into space like Naru and Kimiaki told me?!" he enthused, hopping up and down with uncontrollable excitement himself at the possibility. _"Really?!"_

"No," Su chuckled, looking down at the nine-year-old from where she was busily installing the last one of the strange looking pods to the outside of the even stranger-looking craft that they would be travelling in. "We _are_ going to launch it all right, but just up into the lower atmosphere, _not_ into outer space. And how, exactly, did Naru and Kimiaki find out what we were planning, anyway, young man?"

"I dunno, they just did. But why do you have to go flying all of the way into space, when you're supposed to be going time travelling, instead?" the overly curious boy persisted. "I wanna know!"

"I've already told you that we're _not_ going into space," Su contradicted the puzzled looking, tanned youngster, deciding on the spur of the moment that there wasn't much point in trying to keep what they were doing a secret from him anymore. "There's no need for your father and I to go quite that far before we reach a safe altitude. We're only going up into the air for a thousand meters. Once there, we'll go into a stationary hover, and only then fire up my time machine, ya see?"

"_But, why? _Can't you do that right here, where we can watch? I wanna see you do it. _Please, please, please, please?!"_

"No, again. For the simple reason that it's too dangerous to do any time travel at ground level, especially in a large time machine like mine," Su patiently explained. "If we were silly enough to attempt it, then no matter how careful we were, we might still reappear in the past in the exact same physical space as a tree, or a house, or even inside a hill or partially buried in the ground. And that would be super-messy for all concerned – especially for us."

"Huh?" Young Masayuki's brow furrowed with puzzlement. "How come?"

"Okies. Think back to the science tutoring that I've been giving you, Masayuki-kun. Two separate objects can't exist in the exact same space at the exact same time, remember? And if you want a visual to see what it would look like if that were to happen to us and we were to rematerialize in the past in the exact same spot as a tree was standing, then think, 'Double ketchup explosion with metal, wood and bark shrapnel'!"

"Oh…? _Yuck!!"_ Masayuki grimaced at the stomach-churning thought. "That's gross!"

"Exactly. So, to get around that little problem, Keitaro and I first have to fly up above the ground level hazards. Then, once we reach one thousand meters above the ground, we do the time jump to this exact same altitude in the past, where it should be safe to rematerialize without hitting anything. None of the hills surrounding Hinata Hot Springs were anywhere near that height, if I remember correctly?"

Keitaro couldn't help smiling at Su's last statement, having turned back to the chatting pair after restoring order with Motoko junior, just in time to catch the last part of their conversation. _Heh! With Su's photographic memory, that's exactly what she does…_

"I see…?" The boy scratched at the back of his head, in exactly the same manner as his father often did. "So _that's_ where you and Dad are going. _Wow!! _But how are you going to get back down-?"

"Masayuki-kun! Now that Motoko's looking after little Shinobu, stop stalling and go get Naru and Kimiaki off the launch pad, _now,_" Keitaro interrupted, his patience finally at an end. "Or else you'll be watching our coming launch from your bedroom window on the _other_ side of the mesa!"

While his oldest boy and Su had been talking, the annoyed dad had finally managed to attract Motoko junior's attention, and made his wishes quite clear to her. As the six-year-old girl had reluctantly climbed back down the live and highly dangerous power cable, she had suddenly noticed her younger sister, little Shinobu, crying. Alarmed at the sight, the budding kendoist had quickly run over to rescue and comfort her, like the grown-up hero that she was aspiring to be would have done.

Besides, the Elementary School-aged girl had already seen what she needed to see. And for her to linger much longer in that particular area under the time machine might arouse the unwanted suspicions of her two eagle-eyed elders…

Keitaro was totally unaware of the stratagem running through the mind of the eldest of his pair of now departing daughters. All that concerned him at this present moment in time was since the two youngest of his rather large family were now hurrying off back behind the safety barrier, with the loudly avowed intention of going to the laundry to give little Shinobu's plushy a wash in the washing machine, Masayuki had no excuse at all for not hopping to it, and rounding up the remaining pair of his rambunctious offspring, post-haste.

"Yeah, you'd best go get them out of there, Masayuki-kun," Kaolla added, having a very good reason for him doing just that, apart from just reducing their nuisance value. "Because if you don't, there's a good chance that Naru and Kimiaki'll both be going with us if they get caught in the pull from the air scoops and sucked inside the boosters when I fire them up for the lift-off!"

"Okay, okay!" the boy hurriedly replied, knowing better than to push his luck too far with his now unsmiling superiors. "I'll go catch them both right now. And in record time, too, I betcha! Just watch me!"

"Geez, Su, he's just like a younger version of you," Keitaro grumbled, watching his overly nosy son dash off after the two remaining – and definitely the two rowdiest - of their brood of minuscule miscreants. "He's always asking questions about things that don't concern him, and usually at the most inopportune time, too."

Su laughed, then suddenly leaned forward and gave her partner a kiss. "I'll take that as a compliment," the Molmol woman declared, chuckling at the surprised expression on Keitaro's face as he unconsciously brushed at the point of contact on his lips with his free hand. "See how I finally turned out?" she happily pointed out to him. "And you as well, _'Mister Responsibility'_. No doubt, Masayuki-kun will make good, too - eventually."

"'_Ahem!'_ Yeah, I suppose? But, actually, Masayuki had a good point with his last question," Keitaro declared to his long-time companion, as below him, the determined nine-year-old finally managed to grab hold of the two younger twins and with an effort, resolutely began to tow them away from the danger zone, ignoring their squawks and struggles. "If – sorry, _when_ we reappear a kilometer above the Hinata Apartments back in 2002, how _are_ we going to get this machine of yours down again and inside your room, like we planned? And what about the time factor? We've only got two minutes to save the others and get the heck outta there, don't we? Can we afford to waste the time needed to fly down to the apartments and somehow find a way in big enough for your machine to fit…?"

"It's simple, Kei-Baby – because that's _not_ what we're gonna do. So here's my plan. Once we reach the correct location in the time stream above the Hinata Apartments, I've found a way to home in on the electronics in my old lab, using the sensors on the time machine," Kaolla confidently told him. "We don't even have to rematerialize back into normal space first, and it'll only take a split-second to do. Once I have that vital information, the onboard computer will automatically calculate the exact coordinates of my room inside the building, and then manouver our time machine into the correct position. The whole process will take about two seconds, then we can rematerialize directly onto the reinforced floor of my old room in complete safety."

"Whew! That's good to know. And I get it, now," Keitaro re-assured his smug partner, looking a lot less worried after what he had just heard. "We arrive in the time stream at the approximate location, take a reading, and then jump in at the exact location, right?"

"Right! You're getting to be almost as clever as young Masayuki-kun, Keitaro. Keep it up, and I'll give you a star! _Hahahaha!"_

_Grrr!"_ Keitaro growled with mock annoyance at the delighted Molmol beauty. "Smart-Ass! Anyway, back to business. Now that the 'Ant Hill Mob' down there have finally taken a hike, how are these special gizmos that you're installing coming along?"

"Just fine. I've almost finished attaching the last one. See?" Su hefted the electric drill in her right hand and pointed to the robotic clamp that was partially installed at head height above her, on the otherwise smooth, curved surface of that part of the time machine. "Once I finish mounting this last fast-release, it's just a matter of clicking the final backpack pod into place, and then we'll be all set." She flashed him a grin of excitement. "And then, it's showtime!"

"And they work? The quick-release mechanisms and _the_ devices, I mean?"

"They work," Su assured him, total confidence in her voice. "Trust me."

_They'd better?_ Keitaro thought to himself, suppressing a shiver. _If something goes wrong, they're going to be everyone's absolute last hope of escaping that atomic blast alive…!_

-:-:-:-:-:-

One hour later, the two time travellers were finally all ready to go. Inside the dual-purpose time machine/launch vehicle waiting patiently on its platform, the excited Su and the somewhat more apprehensive Keitaro – both understandably now wearing protective, full-body radiation suits – had just finished strapping themselves into their more than comfortable seats in preparation for their imminent blast off. Tama-chan was there as well, tucked securely into a well-padded alcove underneath the control panel.

Tama-chan hadn't changed at all in the twenty-five years since she had escaped the nuclear fires of Doomsday with Su and Keitaro. This hadn't surprised Su in the slightest, since she already knew from her research – both physical and online - that turtles and tortoises could live for hundreds of years. There were plenty of recorded instances of it happening. For instance, a giant Aldabra tortoise at Kolkata Zoo in India, which once was a pet of the British General Clive of India back in the middle of the eighteenth century, had lived to be around 250 years old, before finally dying of liver failure back in 2006.

And on the subject of longevity, even though she was keeping quiet about the matter until she was absolutely sure of her facts, Su was also beginning to strongly suspect that both she and Keitaro were also capable of living for hundreds of years. So, incidentally, were all of the kids – barring fatal accidents or illnesses, of course.

The tiny _onsen tamago_ was accompanying Keitaro and Su for a very important reason. Since Su, and now - after years of lessons from her – Keitaro, as well, could both understand Turtlese, Tama-chan had let them know of her desire to take part in the rescue mission. As to why, that could be summed up in a single word – Mutsumi.

Neither Keitaro nor Su had any recollection whatsoever of what Mutsumi Otohime had been doing on that long ago day. However, Tama-chan did. The tiny flying turtle had been sure that Mutsumi had gone down to commence her lunchtime shift at the Hinata Tea Rooms less than half an hour before the nuclear detonation had wiped her place of work – and the rest of Hinata Hot Springs, as well – completely off the map.

If this had indeed been where their dear friend had gone, Keitaro and Su realized with sinking hearts that there was no way that they, personally, would be able to get the turtle-lady back to the time machine in the two minutes of rescue time that they would have available to them. However, Tama-chan was a different story. The flying turtle was capable of a far greater turn of speed than even Su, and so was capable of covering the distance between the Hinata Apartments and the Tea Rooms in far less than a minute. Furthermore, like Su and Keitaro, Mutsumi had the good fortune to be able to understand Turtlese, and so she would immediately understand Tama-chan's last minute warning about the incredible peril she was in.

As to whether Tama-chan would be able to get Mutsumi back up to Su's room in time to escape with her fellow time travellers, and any of their other long dead friends that they had managed to find and rescue – well, that was far from being certain. But Tama-chan was willing to take the not unsubstantial risk, and so had been given permission by Keitaro and Su to make the journey back into their past with them, to at least make the effort.

Keitaro hadn't made his decision to let Tama-chan participate in the rescue mission without a great deal of soul-searching, and he was praying that – succeed or fail - the tiny flying turtle made it back home with them alive. For Tama-chan was the favorite pet of his kids, and he knew that he'd never hear the end of it if the valiant _onsen tamago_ got left behind to die.

However, Keitaro had not been quite so willing to accede to another request that he had received. He had put his foot firmly down to the pleas of the children that they be allowed to watch the launch of 'Backwards One' – as Su had so eloquently named their time machine - from inside the viewing room at the hanger, deeming such an action to be far too risky. Instead, he and their mother had insisted that their now whinging and complaining passel of sulky offspring view the takeoff from the safety of the viewing platform that ringed the summit of their mesa home.

As he reclined back into his g-force absorbing padded seat, the sweating Keitaro felt his heart hammering wildly in his chest – and not just for the obvious reason that he was about to be rocketed up for a full kilometer into the hot, dry desert air above the oasis, either. Nor was his anxiety entirely due to the frightening thought that he and Su were then planning on travelling inside an experimental time machine back twenty-five years into the past, to what would be ground zero of an atomic bomb detonation – though, no doubt, those facts did have a great deal to do with it.

No, Keitaro's fretfulness was also because he knew that soon – if all went well with their journey – he would be seeing _her_ again…

…The decades-dead girl that he had so desperately loved, and then irrevocably lost forever – or so he had thought.

Until now, that is…

_Oh, my god! My god! Am I really - in less than an hour's time - going to be seeing Naru again…?!_

…_Oh, Naru…?! How can I possibly tell you how much that I loved you, about the years of grief that I suffered through after you died?! But now…now thanks to dear Su's genius, I've got this miraculous chance to save you, to snatch you out of death's grasp and bring you safely back to our home in the future… But, even if we succeed with our insane rescue mission, I know that I can still never have you. It'll be me who has to turn my back on you, and tell you about-"_

"Yo, Keitaro! Snap out of it!" Su's enthusiastic tone registered in Keitaro's mind, jolting him out of his melancholy mental monologue and back to the reality of his current position. "My board's all green, and everything checks out," she told him, giving her passenger a double thumbs-up. "I'm just about to start the automatic launch procedure, so all you gotta do is lay back and enjoy the ride."

As he nodded to his pilot, the far more subdued Keitaro noted without much surprise that the very youthful-looking Molmol woman, despite her mature age and her restraining harness, was almost bouncing up and down in her seat with excitement at their imminent departure into the unknown.

"Ah…yeah, sure, Su. I'm ready when you are," Keitaro declared, trying hard to keep the nervous quaver out of his voice. Now that they were mere seconds away from commencing their highly dangerous mission into the past, his gloved hands were inexplicably trembling in a quite uncontrollable fashion…

"Goody! Everything all tight under there, Tama-chan?" Su cheerily continued, transferring her attention to the tiny turtle's smiling face, peering up at her from below the edge of the control panel.

"Myuh, myuh!" Tama-chan replied, waving a flipper.

"Goody, again! Okies, let's get ready to roll."

Kaolla was just about to push the green launch button on the elaborate looking control panel that curved across the cockpit in front of her seat, when an abnormality on one of the flight instruments caught her eye, and held it. As she re-read the information on the digital readout in question, a slight frown appeared on her tanned, still perfectly smooth and youthful face.

"Hmm? That's strange," Su mumbled, her right hand still poised in mid-air just above the button that would activate their thirty-second countdown to blast off. "We seem to be heavy by about twenty kilograms. Hold on, Kei-Baby, I'd best cancel our launch for a moment until I can figure this out…"

At her announcement of the delay, Keitaro reopened one of his squeezed-shut eyes and turned his face back towards her. "Huh? Sorry, what was that you just said about us being too heavy, Su?"

"Our fully loaded time machine, including the two of us and Tama-chan, is twenty kilograms heavier than I had calculated that we would be," the Molmol girl-woman told him, a baffled expression on her own face at this unexpected glitch in their plan. "And I have absolutely no idea why. Let's see now…? I'm sure that I removed all of the welding gear that I was using to install my special equipment, so it can't be that weighing us down…?"

"Um? Th-that doesn't mean that we've got some sort of a problem, does it?" Keitaro anxiously inquired, his face showing his very real worry at that frightening prospect. Sitting in a fully fuelled launch vehicle/time machine that also contained an inbuilt nuclear cold-fusion reactor was _not_ a good place to find out that his pilot had made a serious boo-boo in her calculations. All of a sudden Keitaro's rather too imaginative mind was filled with spine-chilling visuals of their engines suddenly exploding, and other equally alarming scenarios in the 'most serious' category!

"No, it doesn't," Su decided, rapidly typing in the new figures on her keyboard as she spoke. "We've got plenty of fuel to get us to the required altitude, and keep us airborne for the duration of our mission, even if we are a little heavy on take-off. Besides, I designed this craft to carry a lot more passengers than just us three! So you can relax, Kei-Baby, there's no-way that we're going to crash or blow up because of this."

"_Pheeew!"_ Keitaro let his breath out in a prolonged and heartfelt sigh of uttermost relief at that bit of good news. "So, what does our mysterious little weight gain mean for our mission, then? If anything?"

"Quite a bit, actually," Su assured him, still typing industriously away on her keypad. "Understand, Kei-Baby, it takes _very_ precise calculations for me to be able to get us to where we want to go on _this_ little trip. So I _don't_ wanna get our mass in the equations wrong, or else we could easily end up in 1002, not 2002, ya see? There, that should do it…?"

''_Gulp!'_ Yeah…I get it – I think? So, there's n-no danger of that happening, now, is there…? Us ending up somewhere else, I mean."

"Nah, she's sweet. I've entered our new exact weight to twenty decimal places into the TJC, and it's crunching the numbers for us right now. Another couple of minutes, and we'll be all set to go once again."

"TJC?"

"Time Jump Computer," Su elaborated, busy at her keyboard again. "I'd best just double-check my calculations…"

"Oh…? An acronym, huh?"

"Yup. ICU catch on PDQ. _Nyahahaha!"_

Keitaro managed a weak laugh as well, glad for the momentary stress-release before their imminent and no-doubt, nail-bitingly scary trip into the past. And he offered up a quick thanks to the gods that he had Su right there next to him, too. Keitaro knew from past experience that she was better at relaxing him and making him feel at ease than any other girl that he had ever known…_bar one_…

A second later, the Molmol woman stopped typing with a flourish, and then she slapped her right hand down on the green button. "Right, all done," she announced. "Our pre-plotted course through negative space-time has been altered by a fraction of a degree to take into account the new data concerning our added mass, the extra energy required to propel our extra weight, and our slightly delayed departure time. I've just fired up the thirty-second timer for the launch boosters. Then, as soon as we reach one thousand meters above the desert, our craft will go into a hover, and the quantum drive will automatically cut in, Kei-Baby. So hold onto your hat - we say goodbye to 2027 in exactly two minutes."

'_Gulp!'_ Keitaro gave his companion another weak grin to help mask his nervousness, which had returned with a vengeance. "So…I guess that this is really, it, eh?"

_Negative space-time...?_ A corner of his nervous mind couldn't help wondering as he made his lighthearted comment. _What in the heck is that...?_

"Yup," Su replied, her smile of anticipation a lot more confident than his forced one had been. "Too late to back out now, I guess? Not that I want to, of course!"

"_Ah-heh-heh!_ Yeah, I guess so…?" Keitaro agreed, his voice more than a little strained as he fidgeted nervously at the restraining straps on his seat. The already keyed up, youthful man was only too aware that having to sit through the entirety of a lengthy thirty-second countdown was going to give him altogether too much time to contemplate his own mortality for his liking…

Su gave his pale face a closer scrutiny, and a look of concern appeared on her own one. "Hey, are you feeling all right, Keitaro? You've gone all white and shaky."

"D-don't worry, Su," he nervously reassured her, realizing exactly how he must look. "I…I'll be fine… It's just the waiting that's getting to me."

_There goes my heart rate up again, and I've got this really strange queasy feeling in my stomach now, too. Wow. I can't believe that after all of this time, we're here right now in Su's time machine, and that we're really, really going to do this…? After living through that atomic blast, I never, ever thought that I could ever feel quite as scared as that again, but now, sitting here waiting to be transported back into the past… I'm feeling more than just a little queasy about it…!_

Su laughed again as she watched the play of emotions on Keitaro's tense and anxious face, and realized that the only thing wrong with him was his nerves playing up. "The sick bags are there if you need 'em," she proclaimed cheekily, gesturing to the pocket built into the wall to his left. "Feel free to help yourself."

"Thanks," Keitaro half-laughed, knowing that her words were meant as a joke, but also realizing that he soon might need one or two of the sick bags for real. "I just may take you up on that…"

_Geez, will this countdown never end?! The worst bit is always the waiting – I hope?!_

High as it already was, Keitaro's already considerable stress level would have gone into orbit if he had known of the real reason for their time machine's aforementioned, mysterious weight gain of twenty extra kilos.

For that added amount was the exact weight of little Motoko, her kendo outfit and her miniature, wooden _bokken_. And she was, at that very second; hidden away in the underfloor tool locker of the time machine, bare meters away from her totally unsuspecting elders!

As to why the tiny girl had smuggled herself on board Su's time craft for the dangerous mission, the reason was simple. Little Motoko had always wanted to meet her older namesake, and now that her big chance had arrived to not only do just that, but to also save the life of her long dead hero, there was no way that she was going to miss it. So with those sole thoughts in mind, the tiny kendo wannabe had used her already very real stealth skills to successfully stow away on board the rescue craft.

Her unsuspected presence meant that things were now sure to _not_ go as smoothly as Keitaro and Su were praying that they would…


	5. Chapter 5

_Heyo!_

_This chapter took me quite a long time to write because it contains a lot of real physics. I apologize in advance to any readers who go all swirly-eyed or doze off at some of Su's technical explanations, but I have attempted to write a realistic and believable scenario of just how it would be possible for them to travel through time. It is not as simple as just flipping a switch and they arrive where they want to go._

_As every reader here isn't a theoretical physicist, I tried to make Su's explanations as simple as possible. Hopefully, I succeeded._

_For those who are interested, the next chapter of 'Love Hina: Crime and Punishment' will be up in a couple of days._

_Now, on with the launch!_

-:-:-:-:-:-

**LOVE HINA: DOOMSDAY  
**_**CHAPTER FIVE**_

By Doctor-T

-:-:-:-:-:-

Oblivious to the tiny bundle of trouble hiding beneath their feet, Keitaro and Su pressed themselves further down into their recliner seats as the digital timer wound down to zero. In her alcove, Tama-chan retracted her head back into her protective shell and closed her eyes. As their moment of truth loomed large, the rigid, sweating Keitaro suddenly became aware that his breathing had become shallow and rapid, and that his gloved hands were clutching his armrests so tightly that not even a crowbar could have prized them open again. However, in total contrast to her distressed co-time traveller, Su was acting more like she was about to go on an amusement park ride, her green eyes wide and sparkling with irrepressible excitement.

Boy, was Keitaro glad that he'd been to the bathroom just before embarking on this little trip – _twice._

_Geez, Su…? Aren't you even the slightest bit nervous that we're about to zap ourselves into the unknown, and hopefully reappear twenty-five years into the past? _Keitaro wondered, gritting his teeth together so tightly that they hurt, his squinting eyes riveted on the flickering red numbers as they ticked away with agonizing slowness the remaining few seconds to their uncertain fate. _I wish that I had your confidence. All I want is to get this over and done with-!_

The timer reached zero.

With a sudden, quadruple roar, the booster jets ignited, the emitted thunder reverberating from the rock-walled hanger, the fiery exhaust from the multiple nozzles speedily filling the enclosure with a billowing cloud of superheated gas. Then the oval-shaped time machine began to lift off from its platform, slowly at first, but rapidly gaining speed as it cleared the now open, sliding roof that capped its launch bay. To the shouting, cheering cluster of excited children jumping up and down and waving goodbye from the viewing platform above their rocky home, the time machine looked for all the world like a UFO as it rode its four rippling columns of transparent flame vertically upwards into the clear desert sky.

"_Yee-owww!"_ Keitaro gasped out as he was forced downwards into his seat by the rapid acceleration, his entire body vibrating from the powerful engines of their vertically soaring vehicle. "S-Su, I don't think that I'll ever get used to this…?"

"_Nyahahaha!_ This is great! Hang on, Keitaro!" Kaolla shouted back, looking more like a kid who'd just found out that she was related to Santa, than a guinea pig being fired up into the atmosphere in an experimental time machine. "We'll be slowing down and levelling off in a few more seconds, and once we achieve our hover at one thousand meters, my quantum drive will start up. _Then_ you'll see a show!"

"Wha-what do you mean, _'then I'll see a show'?"_ Keitaro managed to get out, his hands and forearms already aching from the strength of his panicky grip on the hand rests. "Just what in the heck do you call _this_ part of the mission, then?"

"Fun!" Su laughed, their craft finally beginning to decelerate as it neared its desired altitude. "What do you think, Tama-chan?"

"Myuh, myuh!" came from under the control panel, the hot springs turtle still not sounding the slightest bit nervous about their extraordinary adventure.

"_Traitor,"_ Keitaro told the tiny turtle; somewhat mortified that he was the only one of the three with the willies. "You're used to flying, Tama-chan – _I'm not."_

-:-:-:-:-:-

In her uncomfortable position wedged inside the tool locker below the cockpit, little Motoko didn't think the launch was much fun, either. With no soft padding whatsoever for protection against the g-force crushing her tiny body down hard into the cold, rigid metal tools surrounding her, her agony was intense. Tears appeared in the six-year-old girl's eyes, and she bit her lip against the pain, but she hung on, knowing that her frightening ride would come to a stop in only a moment or two more.

Besides, the fact that she had been born into a family of heroes - two of who had actually survived both an atomic bomb blast, and then a trip across the Pacific Ocean whilst practically burnt to a crisp - kept running through the proud mind of the miniscule stowaway. Because of this, Little Motoko was determined that, despite her pain and fear, she would _not_ disgrace herself in their eyes by crying out like a baby just because of a little discomfort.

-:-:-:-:-:-

A few seconds later, their time ship finally came to a complete halt in mid-air, exactly one kilometer up. As it came to rest, from the top, bottom, and both sides of the curved hull of the silver-colored craft, four smooth, rectangular panels of curved metal extended out on telescoping rods, each one finally coming to a halt parallel to, and at a distance of about five metres from the main body of their now-motionless ship. Then Keitaro became aware of a faint humming sound, which was audibly and rapidly growing louder with every passing second.

"All righty! Here we go, Kei-Baby!" Su shouted as their hovering craft was suddenly engulfed in a sphere of shimmering, violet energy, as the ultra-strong electromagnetic field being projected from the surrounding quartet of curved antennas snapped into place. "Magnetic containment shield on. Now for the fireworks!"

A split second later, Keitaro's unspoken _'Huh?!'_ at Su's comment was answered in a most spectacular fashion, as the multitude of multi-barrelled, rotating lasers built into the outer edges of the curved-metal antennas flashed into life. The thousands of tiny, coherent light beams then began to spin faster and faster until the entire inner surface of the perfectly spherical magnetic field that now totally surrounded the time machine was a solid wall of pure white light – effectively sealing the enclosed space off from the normal flow of time. Fortunately for the eyesight of the two passengers within, the windscreen of the time craft automatically darkened in response to the blinding glare flooding the interior. Even so, the spectacle was dazzling, and Keitaro instinctively raised up his right arm to shield his face from the in-pouring of excess light. Su merely whipped on a pair of sunglasses, and flashed him a sparkly-toothed grin.

"My instruments have confirmed that time has just stopped inside the null field created by the lasers, and we've now also achieved a perfect vacuum inside the field, as well," Su sang out, providing a running commentary to the weird happenings transpiring just outside their singular craft. "The vacuum surrounding us is now being flooded with the absolute-zero temperature negative energy being manufactured by my time machine."

"Negative energy?" Keitaro mused out loud, remembering back to his largely unsuccessful previous efforts to understand the esoteric work that Su had been carrying out in her lab. "But I thought you told me that negative energy couldn't exist for more than a millionth of a second inside our universe, because it doesn't really exist in the first place?! 'Virtual reality energy', I think you said it was…?"

"Yep! That's why we need an area of stopped time – like inside the laser-generated null field surrounding us right now – to keep this usually-only-imaginary energy real, and in our own particular universe of existence for long enough for me to manipulate it," Su chuckled, causing the by now totally baffled Keitaro to stare with blank-faced incomprehension at her.

"_Huh?!"_ And this time, his query was audible, all right.

"Negative energy _can_ exist for longer than a millisecond in our universe, but only in a enclosed area where time has completely stopped," the Molmol woman patiently explained to her utterly mystified partner. "But it takes an incredible amount of energy to artificially manufacture a sufficient quantity of it to be useable, and then to also create an area of zero time to store it in, which is why I have that miniaturized, nuclear cold-fusion reactor built into my time machine. There's _no-way_ that we could time-travel by this particular method without the power being generated by cold-fusion."

"_Ah-heh_. Okay. I'm not the physicist that you are, Su," Keitaro finally conceded, feeling at that moment just like an elementary school kid would do when discussing quantum mechanics with a university level physics professor. "I'll just have to take your word for all of that. I _am_ interested in just how you're managing to pull all of this off, though, so carry on with your explanation…in words of _one syllable or less_, please?"

"_Nyahahaha!_ Okies. Anyway, this negative energy that our ship is generating right now is being fed into an already existing, quantum-sized, space/time wormhole, the one that I managed to create in my atom-smashing particle accelerator a year ago, to be precise. I was able to isolate this micro-wormhole and keep it stable in a smaller version of the zero-time null field. Then I carefully grew it to just-visible size by feeding it negative energy that I generated after the event, in my lab."

Su then took a deep breath, and let out a relieved sigh. "Thank god for all of the scientific and technological advances over the last twenty-five years, Keitaro," she said with feeling. "I could never have done all of this with the technology in existence way back in 2002."

"Yeah. _Lucky us,"_ Keitaro stated, somehow managing to look both thoughtful and apprehensive at the same time. "And with regards to the space-time wormhole you somehow made, I seem to remember you telling me about that last year. So…now that you've managed to make it bigger, I guess that your plan is to use it in some way that'll send us back through time to where we want to go?"

"Yep! And here's how. Just after our much larger zero-time null field came on and stopped the flow of time in the entire space between the inside of our magnetic containment shield and the outside of our time machine, my captive wormhole was released, to float frozen in space-time just outside our ship. Hold on-" Kaolla then checked an instrument on her control panel, before looking back with satisfaction at her companion.

"Good! The negative energy that we're producing has just now finished expanding the wormhole to completely fill the zero-time region inside of our magnetic containment field, and it will also keep the wormhole open long enough for us to pass through it safely. So, once the negative energy pressure inside the containing magnetic sphere builds up enough, the virtual energy and us will have no place to go, except back to where it should be in the first place, through the wormhole and into the universe that's opposite to our own one."

"_What?!_ We're about to go into _another universe?"_ Keitaro squawked, staring at Su like she was crazy. "Hang on, I thought that we were on a time travel mission-?"

Before the now definitely alarmed Keitaro could complete his protestation, all of reality outside their window abruptly winked out of existence, to be replaced by a totally featureless void of endless, pitch-black nothingness.

-:-:-:-:-:-

On the open and airy viewing platform just below the summit of their rocky home, the kids let out a loud, collective, _"Woooow…!!"_ of huge-eyed astonishment as the tiny ball of yellow light that the time-craft had morphed into, finally imploded into nothingness, leaving behind a mysterious, faintly glowing oval of purplish energy hanging motionless in the blue sky above their heads. In stark contrast to the time machine, this stationary, semi-transparent ellipse showed no sign of fading away at all. It seemed to the awestruck children below that the strange structure was fated to be a permanent fixture in the sky from then on.

As his other siblings finally settled down and began to chatter excitedly amongst themselves about the wonders that they had just seen, Masayuki suddenly noticed something very odd. After taking a quick look around the entirety of the viewing platform, the nine-year-old boy turned back to his brothers and sisters with a puzzled look on his suddenly very serious face.

"Hey, you guys," Masayuki called loudly out to them, his anxious tone bringing every eye to him. "Has anyone seen Motoko?"

-:-:-:-:-:-

Keitaro was unaware that he could have answered his oldest son's query by merely looking under the trapdoor in the floor just behind his seat. But since he had no idea at all that his errant daughter had come along with him for the ride, the point was moot. Instead, his complete and total attention was now riveted on what he could now see through the super-tough windscreen in front of him.

_Oh, god! Th-this must be the Negative Universe that Su just told me about? _Keitaro realized, staring with huge-eyed awe into the lightless eternity now surrounding them. _She actually did it! We've been popped by pressure like a cork from a bottle out of our own universe and into another one…! But, why?!_

"Yay! We've successfully passed through the wormhole and entered the universe that mirrors our own normal one, Keitaro! And everything on my control panel seems to check out just fine," Su enthused, confirming what Keitaro had just guessed, a trace of relief in her own tone as she quickly scanned the flickering readouts. "Oh, yeah. Don't worry about not being able to see our electromagnetic shield or the light from our lasers any more. My instruments indicate that they _are_ still active out there. It's just that everything outside the circular null-field of stopped time surrounding our time machine no longer registers in visible light, that's all."

Despite wondering why the heck they had jumped into another universe when they were supposed to be travelling back through time into their own past, at that moment, Keitaro had an even more urgent question that he needed an answer to.

"Ah…Oh-okay. But can you tell me why there's nothing outside the time machine except darkness?" Keitaro asked, a big bead of sweat on his forehead, peering nervously into the pitch-blackness outside the brightly lit, metallic cocoon they were comfortably ensconced in. To the already jumpy exile, the depressing thought that they and their craft could possibly be the only objects in this boundless, lightless, eternal void of nonexistence that they now found themselves in was frightening to say the least. "I can't even see any sunlight, or any stars here," he uneasily continued. "Surely we should still be able to see them, at least?!"

"True," Su conceded. "Normally we would be able to - if we were still in our own universe, that is. But we're now in our _opposing universe_, remember? And while we're here, we are the ones who are comprised of virtual energy, and the universe outside our shields is the real, physical one. It's just like I suspected it would be."

"_What?!_ Are you trying to tell me that to everything outside your force field surrounding our time machine, we're not even real…?!"

"Yupsies. As to why, on this side of the quantum barrier, absolutely everything – including space, time and matter - is reversed. What is virtual mass and energy in our own universe is real mass and energy here, and vice-versa - what is reality here is imaginary where we came from. But just to confuse you even further, Kei-Baby, to you, Tama-chan and I inside our protective electromagnetic bubble, _we're_ still the real ones, and the universe outside is still only imaginary reality. So, to answer your question, we can't perceive anything outside of our time machine because to all intents and purposes, this universe doesn't really exist – even though we're now in it! We can't even see the light spectrum here, hence the total blackness outside."

"_Uh_, if you say so, Su," her partner mumbled back, trying hard to mentally grasp that more-than-bizarre concept without developing a headache. "So, what you're saying is, since this place is really only imaginary to us, it's totally black everywhere outside because there really is nothing here for us to see?"

"No, there is _plenty_ to see in this universe, but our unaided senses just can't perceive any of it. D'ya understand, Kei-Baby?"

"Uh…no, not really," Keitaro sheepishly admitted, his head spinning as he tried to make sense of all that the gorgeous genius had just imparted to him. Deciding for the sake of his sanity that a change of subject was definitely in order, he came up with a much simpler question for her to answer.

"So, now that we're here, what do we do next?"

"We go save our friends, as planned!" his bright-eyed pilot happily proclaimed, pressing another button. "All righty, Negative Ion engine on, and we're away!"

At her declaration of intent, Keitaro braced himself for the sudden surge of acceleration, but it didn't come. Puzzled at the lack of g-force affecting their bodies, he turned his head back to Kaolla and inquired as to why.

"We can't feel the acceleration because our time machine and we have no mass, and therefore no weight at all in this universe, Kei-baby," Su cheerily told him, looking very pleased at having yet another of her theories confirmed by practical experience. "Like I just told ya, to this new universe surrounding us, we're the ones made of virtual particles, ya see? So, since we're only imaginary, we're not subject to the laws of physics here. And as long as we're safely enclosed inside of our protective magnetic field and the stopped-time field inside of that, gravity, acceleration, and inertia – none of these forces can affect us in any way. We're essentially untouchable!"

"…_?! No gravity, either?"_ Keitaro repeated. "So _that's_ why I've been feeling so light while I've been here?"

At that very second, confirmation of the truth of that statement came in no uncertain fashion. Tama-chan suddenly drifted up out of her padded cubbyhole and into his line of vision, without even so much as even a single flipper beat!

"Myuh-myuh!" the turtle happily told him, her straight and level flight abruptly turning into a backwards roll in mid air as she waved her front left flipper at him.

Su laughed at the sight, while Keitaro merely gaped. "I couldn't have put it better, myself, Tama-chan," she giggled. "So whatever you do, don't lose your lunch in here now, Keitaro. 'Cause if you do, I'll need my vacuum cleaner to suck it up out of mid air!"

-:-:-:-:-:-

In her dark and cramped underfloor storage space, little Motoko had also suddenly noticed that very same peculiarity. For some bizarre reason, she was no longer being pulled down by g-force or even normal strength gravity onto the brutally hard tools underneath her. To the contrary, she now seemed to be actually drifting in mid-air, as if she weighed no more than a soap bubble…! _Amazing!_

The elementary school girl cautiously tested her startling theory, mindful of the pain from the bruises that she had just received during lift-off. Placing one tiny hand on the metal wall in front of her, she gave an experimental push, to be sent sailing backwards feet-first into the wall behind her. _Wow!_

_It's true! I don't weigh anything!_ Motoko whooped silently, only just succeeding in muffling the laugh of delighted surprise that had nearly burst free from her mouth as she realized what she had just achieved. _I'm flying! I'm flying! Hahahaha!_

Thrusting herself forward again with her feet, the tiny kendoist began to bounce back and forth, from wall to wall in her enclosure, revelling in the sensation of free flight. Motoko's one wish at that moment were that she had a larger room to bounce around in, but even so, she wouldn't have missed this particular fun experience for the world. Boy, were her siblings going to be jealous when she told them about this?!

-:-:-:-:-:-

In the cockpit above the thrilled girl, Keitaro was finally coming to terms with the weird reality that he had found himself travelling through. And with acceptance came a burning desire to find out from Su, just what else she knew about this totally new universe they had temporarily entered.

"So… because gravity or inertia no longer have any effect on us, no matter how fast we start or stop our time machine, I won't be sent flying by it, or even feel its effects…?" Keitaro tentatively inquired, disbelief once more in his tone.

"You got it," Su confirmed. "And another big advantage of us having no mass at all here means that we can – _and have_ - already accelerated to near lightspeed."

"_What?!_ _How?"_

"Simple. Once outside of our electromagnetic force field, the negative energy particles from our Negative Ion propulsion engine _do_ have mass here, ya see, while we still don't! And since we and everything else _inside_ the magnetic field surrounding our time machine are virtual reality in this universe and therefore totally weightless, the ion particles act as if they are in unimpeded free flight, pushing us almost instantly to only a fraction under the speed of light. Because of this we have motive power and the ability to manoeuvre. And that's just what we're doing."

_At least I understood that bit? _Keitaro nodded to himself.

"I get it. Because the ion particles are real here, and we aren't, they can go at their normal speed in this universe because they're not really pushing anything."

"Bingo! For the reasons that I've just mentioned, we didn't even notice our acceleration to cruising speed. And that's how my time machine is right now taking us on the course that I mathematically charted through Negative Time and Space to where Hinata Hot Springs was located twenty-five years ago in our own space/time equivalent to this universe, just like I planned."

"But how can we find our way anywhere in this other universe, when there's absolutely nothing here?" Keitaro protested, gesturing at the unending blackness surrounding their time craft. "We have no sun, no stars - no points of reference to go by at all."

"I'm using _very_ advanced mathematics to do it. It helps a lot with our search that I already know the exact geographical location of the Hinata Apartments in our own universe twenty-five years ago. Because I have this knowledge, I've managed to work out the approximate physical and temporal coordinates of that equivalent space here in the Negative Universe. These coordinates should mirror exactly where the apartments were in our own universe, just on the other side of the quantum barrier. We're currently travelling at a velocity of…let me see…99.9998 percent of the speed of light, directly towards where my formulas say, 'X marks the spot'."

"Tha-that's great. _Whoa_ - 99.9998 percent of the speed of light?!"

"Yeah! Isn't having zero mass great!"

At Su's more than incredible statement about their supposed speed, Keitaro managed to think coherently for a moment or two, and then he frowned and shook his tousled head in denial.

"No, that can't be right, Su," her ex-landlord objected, sure that he had discovered the fly in the ointment of her plan. "I do understand how we can reach a speed like that here, because if we really do have no mass in this universe, we don't need almost infinite energy to accelerate us to just under the speed of light. But even _I_ know that the closer you travel to the speed of light, the slower time runs. So, if we really were now zipping along at only 0.0002 percent below light-speed, by now, time should have almost stopped for us inside our time machine. And that means we'd be thinking, speaking and moving very, very slowly. But, as you can clearly see, we're both doing all three of those actions at our usual speed in here. Look!" He waved his hands at the smiling Molmol woman to emphasize his very valid point.

"Yeah, but that's only because we're barely moving at all in relation to each other," Su explained, her riposte pointing out the flaw in her partner's own reasoning. "But to any stationary observers outside the closed space of my time machine – if they could by some miracle see us imaginary, virtual people passing them by at the speed we're going at now – you'd be perfectly right with what you're saying, Keitaro. To them, we'd appear to be frozen in place like statues because of the time dilation effect you're talking about. In fact, they would have to watch us for almost an entire year just to see you complete a single movement such as scratching your nose! Conversely, to us, everything in the negative universe outside my time machine has speeded up so fast that it would be invisible to us, anyway, even if we could perceive it – which we can't."

"Okay, that makes sense, I guess?" her companion conceded, thinking the girl-woman's explanation through. "You're right, of course, Su. I'd forgotten that we wouldn't even notice time slowing down, because our mind processes would be doing the exact same thing at the same time, so everything would still appear normal to us."

"Wow, but _your_ mind's certainly not slow, now, Kei-Sweetie," Su told him with a wink, impressed at the knowledge of physics he had gained over the years, mainly through chatting to her and self-study. "Most people find it quite hard to grasp that concept."

"Heh. Thanks. I was smart enough to _almost_ get into Tokyo U once, remember? Now answer me this. Since we really are travelling at almost the speed of light right now, wouldn't that be just taking us at high speed further into our future?" Keitaro slowly asked, this question having jumped into his mind the instant that he had fully accepted the mind-boggling speed that they were currently travelling at through this weird, lightless void. "I thought we wanted to go in the other direction, into the past!"

"Nope for the first bit, yep for the second. Because the future of this Negative Energy Universe _is_ the past in our own one, Kei-Baby. Time runs backwards here! And that's the key to our time travel being possible in the first place. The fact that we're right now heading at near-lightspeed into the future of our opposing, mirror-reflection universe means that we're simultaneously heading at near-lightspeed into the past of the one that we came from, as well. This, combined with the time-dilation effect we are now experiencing, is allowing us to travel back entire years into the past of our own universe, in what will be to us a time span of only a few short minutes."

"All right. Now that I have that point cleared up, tell me this. How in the heck are we going to, firstly, get out of this negative universe back into our own normal one, once we reach the correct time in the past? And how will we then travel forwards through time back to our home in 2027 again?!"

"That's actually the easy bit, because we've left one end of our space-time wormhole back in our own universe, hanging in the air one kilometer above Pararakelse Island, Kei-Baby. That end is now permanently stable there at its new and larger size because of the negative energy that I fed it. The other end of the wormhole is still safe with us, trapped inside our zero-time field surrounding our time machine. It goes wherever we go. D'ya catch my drift?"

A glimmer of understanding appeared in Keitaro's eyes. And when he answered his beautiful pilot, there was more than just a trace of relief in his voice.

"I think that I know what you're getting at here. Your plan is to take this end of the wormhole back through time with us, and open it up above the Hinata Apartments in 2002! Then we fly through it, grab our friends, and escape back through it and directly out of the other end in 2027, bypassing the Negative Universe on our return journey altogether. Su, you're a genius!"

"Yup, I am," Su beamed. "And you got it! But doing that is not quite as simple as it sounds. The trick is for us to first travel around in a giant loop for twenty-five light years here in the Negative Universe, at just below the speed of light, like we're now in the process of doing. This will take us twenty-five years into the future here, and simultaneously twenty-five years into the past of our own universe, back to where we want to go. Once there, we then have to home in on the tachyon cloud from the atomic detonation, because that is what marks our entrance point back into our own universe, to where Hinata Hot Springs is situated in 2002."

Keitaro scratched at his forehead as he mulled over what he had just been told. "Okay, I get that bit, too - I think? So, how long will it take us to get to the correct co-ordinates in this flaky non-reality, or whatever the heck it is – or isn't?"

"At our current speed, no more than half an hour," Su assured Keitaro, unable to resist another chuckle at the expression on her partner's face. "Well, provided that our sensors succeed in locating the energy spike from the atomic bomb detonation, and then successfully track the tachyon cloud back to its exact time and place of origin, of course."

"And you can still do that, even with us here in this other universe?" Keitaro pressed her. "Find the trace energy left behind by the atomic explosion, I mean?"

"Piece of cake, Kei-Baby, since a fair percentage of the tachyon particles have permanently embedded themselves in the barrier of quantum foam that separates our universe from this mirror universe," Su proclaimed confidently. "Because that happened, my time machine's sensors can locate the trapped tachyons at the exact space-time location of the atomic blast just as easily from the Negative Universe on this side of the barrier as they could in the one we came from, where the explosion physically happened."

"All right, but first we have to get close enough to that location for our sensors to pick up the tachyon cloud in the first place! You said that we are already doing just that right at this very moment – but how?"

"Easy, again. As I said before, I've worked out the approximate co-ordinates of where we need to be in this mirror universe. So once we've managed to fly forward along and across the negative time flow to that spot, my time machine should automatically home in on the tell-tale cloud of frozen tachyons that marks the site of Hinata Hot Springs, no worries."

_No worries?_ The still only partially reassured Keitaro breathed out to himself, settling back down into his seat again in anticipation of their half-hour wait. _I hope that you're right about that, Su? I really, really do…!_

Actually, Su did turn out to be right. It was only _after_ they had safely landed back in 2002 that their troubles began.

-:-:-:-:-:-

_Author's Note:_

_Su's time machine in this story is based on both real and theoretical science. Here's a few interesting facts for you, the reader:_

_1). Yes, 'negative energy' does exist, and it can in fact be generated using current technology. But it only lasts for milliseconds._

_2). There have been warnings that the high energy impacts of sub-atomic particles in particle accelerators might accidentally create mini black holes. Large particle accelerators could theoretically also create very short-lived space/time wormholes at the quantum level._

_3). Larger space/time wormholes theoretically can be used for time and space travel. 'Negative energy' is one type of exotic matter that could be used to both expand a microscopic space/time wormhole to a useable size, and also keep it open and stable long enough to be used._

_4). Rotating lasers can and have been used to create an area of stopped time._

_5). A large number of reputable physicists believe that time and space are reversed at speeds faster than the speed of light._

_6). Likewise, some believe that if you can somehow cool an object to a temperate below absolute zero (-273.15 degrees Celsius, or -459.67 degrees Fahrenheit),_ _the matter so cooled will drop from our universe into a lower-energy-state 'negative' or 'mirror' universe, where time and space also flow backwards._

_Next Chapter: The action packed fiasco - I mean, rescue...! Just who will Keitaro and Su manage to save? And can they even save themselves...?_


	6. Chapter 6

_Hiyas! Sorry about the long wait between updates. I was going to cram the entire attempted rescue into this chapter, but there was far too much going on here to condense it down into just one. So, to do this story justice, part two of the rescue will be in Chapter Seven - which _will _be posted a lot quicker than this chapter was, since it's already mostly written._

_As for the big Chapter Fifty of 'Love Hina: Crime and Punishment', that's coming soon, too. I haven't quite finished writing this chapter yet. I'll post it once I'm satisfied that I've got everything down correctly. As befitting the Fiftieth Chapter, a lot of interesting happenings will take place in this milestone installment - not the least, the confrontation between Kanako and Naru._

_All right! And now the moment that you've all been waiting for:_

-:-:-:-:-:-

**LOVE HINA: DOOMSDAY  
**_**CHAPTER SIX**_

By Doctor-T

-:-:-:-:-:-

The Location: Su's time machine, the Negative Universe.

The Date: _Circa._ 2003, and still travelling into the past.

Twenty-five minutes had now passed since Su, Keitaro and Tama-chan had commenced their journey at near lightspeed through the Negative Universe. Now that they were nearing the location in negative space-time where Su claimed the tachyon cloud would be situated, Keitaro felt his inner tension being ratcheted up again. Finding the tachyon cloud in the vast immensity of an entire new universe was like trying to pinpoint a needle in a _billion_ haystacks. He could only hope that Su's mathematical skills were as advanced as he was desperately hoping that they were…

"Su…?"

"Yes, Sweetie?"

"Are we there yet?" Keitaro asked weakly, trying to lighten the mood with the old, time-tested adage.

"_Nyahahaha!_ Nice touch. But in answer, _yep._ Not far to go now before we reach the big 'X' in my calculations."

Keitaro suppressed a gulp, but managed a smile, nevertheless. "Good," he declared. "I'm as ready as I'll ever be to do this now, I guess."

"Ditto. But don't forget that when we materialize back in my old room – even though this may sound like a bit of a contradiction after what we've just done - time will be at a premium," Su warned her nervous companion. "We don't have time for long-winded explanations with the others. If anyone we find tries to argue with you, or run, use your special equipment on them, okies?"

"Got it," Keitaro answered, despite feeling a tinge of uneasiness inside at the very real possibility of having to do just that. Sure, back then, Naru in particular had made his life a living hell, but he had no particular desire to use force on her, or anyone else for that matter.

…_Still, I'll do it all right, if I have to, to save their lives,_ he resolved. _It's not as though I'll have a choice, will I?_

"We're almost there, Kei-Baby," Su informed him, breaking in on his thoughts, her face a study in concentration as she focused on her control panel. "My instruments tell me that we're coming up on where 2002 should be in the time stream, right now."

"So now we've got to find the tachyon cloud," Keitaro stated, his gaze moving from Su's face to the heads-up display projected onto their windscreen. "Any sign of it yet?"

"No. But that's only to be expected. We're still too far into the future of our own universe to pick it up yet. But it shouldn't be too long now before- _Ahah! Bingo!"_

"What is it, Su? Did you get a reading?"

"I think so. Hold on…_yup!_ Another tachyon just hit our zero-time field. As you already know, Keitaro, since tachyon particles can only exist at speeds faster than lightspeed, they travel backwards in time both here in the Negative Universe and back in our normal universe. Consequentially, they are only visible for a millisecond as they travel backwards from the future, through our here and now, and on into the past. But, like what happened with the wormhole I isolated and kept stable, the area of stopped time surrounding my time machine freezes them in place as they pass through our electromagnetic shields. That's the only way to keep them visible for long enough for my instruments to register them, you see."

"I get it. At least we now know that we're headed into the right region of this wacky space-time. Your spatial calculations were spot-on."

"Yup. Time to hit the brakes," Su confirmed, hitting the 'reverse engines' touch pad, her gaze riveted onto her speedometer, for want of a better word for it. "There! I'm dropping us down to fifty percent of light speed..._done."_

"Hey, we've just had another hit," Keitaro informed his pilot, his own eyes glued to the heads up display projected onto the big screen/windshield in front of them. Two more flashes winked into existence directly ahead of them. "And another, and another!"

"All right! Full stop!" the Molmol genius cheered, her eyes wide with excitement. "We've struck pay dirt!"

At that very moment, a small galaxy of flashing yellow dots caused by multiple tachyon impacts filled the center of the display, causing the keyed-up Keitaro to jump with nervous excitement as well in his well-cushioned seat.

"Su, we're here," he enthused, his heart hammering. "This _has_ to be the site of the explosion. So, what now?"

"I'm sending our unexpanded end of the wormhole on ahead," Su responded, her nimble fingers flying over her keyboard. "I've developed an algorithm that _should_ send it further back in time to two minutes before the atomic explosion. Once the wormhole has reached its correct location, I'll open it to about a meter wide. We should be able to get a glimpse through that end of Hinata Hot Springs and the apartments for a reading. Once I've got the exact location of my room inside the building, I'll shift the wormhole into my room, expand it to its full size, and we'll make our jump directly onto the reinforced concrete floor by the right-hand wall."

"Hey! The right wall? Isn't – isn't that the wall that your nuclear reactor was built into?!" Keitaro gulped, feeling his entire body turn to glacial ice at the thought of them rematerializing right next to a collapsing, hypercritical atomic core.

"Yep. And for a reason," Su declared, her grim eyes locking with his own. "The reflective outer hull of my time machine is impervious to nuclear radiation, you see. And so is the space-time interface of the wormhole once it has been opened in my room. So, by placing my time machine directly in front of the reactor, I can use its reflective hull, the wormhole itself, and also the electromagnetic shields on that side of our ship to block out the hard radiation from the meltdown, reflecting it away from us, the entrance ramp, and any of our friends that we manage to save."

"G-good thinking," Keitaro conceded, relief breaking out in his face, voice and body posture at that titbit of more than welcome news. "Even with this radiation suit on, I feel so much better knowing we'll have some added protection!"

"Yup, me, too. Oh, yeah, once other thing, Kei-Baby. When we arrive in my room, Naru and all of the others will have already absorbed quite a lethal dose of radiation. Make doubly sure that you remember to give them their shots, okies?"

Keitaro nodded, patting the bandolier of anti-radiation injectors that was sewn down the left front side of his silver radiation suit.

"I know the procedure. Grab them, stab them, then get them the hell into the time machine!"

Su managed a laugh at his pale-faced but determined expression. "All righty. Let's get ready to rumble!"

-:-:-:-:-:-

The Location: Inside the Hinata Apartments.

The Date: 2002, Doomsday, exactly five minutes before the detonation.

Up in Su's third floor jungle room, Naru Narusegawa sat morosely on a flat rock beside the heated pond in her younger friend's bizarre tropical habitat, absentmindedly dangling her long, slender legs into the steaming hot water as she waited for the teen genius to come up from her underground laboratory for her lunch. Naru had been feeling quite downcast all morning, and even though she knew the main reason for her melancholy mood, up until now, her stubborn pride refused to let her acknowledge that in truth, she had been the main architect of her own prolonged bout of depression this day.

It all had to do with that idiot landlord of hers, of course. Despite her multiple previous warnings to Keitaro not to go poking his head up through the hole in the floor of her room without knocking and calling out for permission first, _yet again_ the dunderhead had done just that, copping an eyeful of her totally naked ass – and more. After spotting his lecherous, huge-eyed, pink-tinged so-called face panting with lust at her bare innocence from under the plywood sheet, she had reacted instinctively, hurling her teapot full into his face, sending the creep falling back down into his own room with a most satisfying thump. After slamming the plywood sheet back down over the hole, the livid teen had seriously considered nailing it down permanently, or setting up a bucket of boiling water in place for the next time that Keitaro decided to peep her. But Naru had finally settled for just throwing her clothes back on and then stamping out of her room for a badly needed hot meal and rant with the other, most sympathetic residents in the dining hall.

_Let the lecher rot in his room. With any luck, he's broken his damn neck and won't be around to plague me any more!_ had been her outraged thoughts at the time.

Her swift and brutal instant revenge on her perverted, serial-peeping manager had seemed fine and dandy at the time, and for an hour or so afterwards, even, but now…?

Now Naru's conscience was telling her in a persistently nagging voice that maybe – just maybe – she had gone too far with him this time.

When the battered and most apologetic Keitaro had finally shown up in the dining hall, he had sworn until he was blue in the face to her that he _had_ yelled out a warning that he was about to poke his head up through the hole in the floor and look into her room. After listening skeptically to what the practically grovelling loser had to say, and as much as it went against the grain to admit it even to herself, Naru was still honest enough to concede that if Keitaro had, indeed, called out to her of his intention to come up like he was just now claiming, she probably wouldn't have heard him do so on this particular occasion. After all, she _had_ been wearing her headphones at the time of the unsavory incident, and so her music would have in all probability totally drowned out the sound of his voice.

Furthermore, it wasn't helping Naru's conscience any that the song she had been listening and singing along to at the time, had the lyric 'yes' more than once in its chorus…

Maybe it really _had_ happened the way he had claimed. Could Keitaro have heard her singing that word out loud and thought that she really was giving him permission to come up into her room, after all…?

_Oh, dammit! _Naru finally admitted to herself, rubbing at her weary eyes as she swished her feet though the steaming water. _I really think that I fucked up badly this morning. Poor Keitaro…_

_And to think that I just left him laying there injured in his room after that fall from his ceiling. What must he think of me, now?_

_Oh, god. How do I make it up to him this time? _The despondent teen let out her breath in a long, hissing sigh of resignation as she reluctantly realized what she really ought to do.

_At the very least, I think that I owe Keitaro a sincere apology for my overreaction, _she decided with a grimace. _And maybe after I've done that, I should even invite him up to my room tonight so we can sit down in privacy and talk things through. I know that he really does like me…and I guess that for some wacky, totally incomprehensible reason, I sorta, kinda like him, too…maybe like him, that is. I-!_

Just then, Naru caught hold of her thoughts as she abruptly realized what her vacillating mind was doing, yet again.

"_Oh, geez! _Here I go_ again _with my damn indecisiveness," Naru berated herself, kicking angrily at the water with her right foot, sending a spray of hot water droplets cascading across the steaming pond. "Why can't I just tell Keitaro how I really feel about him? _Dammit!_ It's high time that I sorted out, once and for all, just how I really feel about that clumsy idiot _– huh?!"_

Naru sniffed at the air, her petit nose wrinkling at the sharp odor that was just now reaching her sensitive nostrils. "What is that…? Is that smoke that I can smell…?"

Raising her antennaed head up from her hands, Naru turned her startled gaze to peer through the indoor jungle towards the far wall of Su's huge room, to where a large nuclear symbol was displayed prominently on a massive, metal hatch, half shrouded by hanging vines, built into the sturdy wall. Even as she watched through rapidly widening eyes, the vegetation shrivelled and blackened, then abruptly burst into flickering flames. Next second, the now thoroughly alarmed teen was struck by a sudden wave of heat being emitted from what seemed to be the wall, itself. And were those heat waves beginning to dance across the front of Su's reactor casing…?

Abandoning Su's lunch tray, Naru hurriedly rose back to her feet, turned and ran across the sward to the intercom built into the front wall next to the doorway of the room. Thumbing it on, the worried girl called out to Kaolla, whom was still working in her hidden laboratory somewhere deep underneath the apartments, intending to inform the oblivious Molmol teen of the scary situation that was rapidly developing in her jungle-clad room high above her.

"Su? _Su! Are you there?! Something's wrong with your-!"_

The sudden wail of a hidden alarm cut Naru's words off in mid-sentence as if with a knife. Her finger slipped off the intercom button as she spun about to stare in fright towards the wall speaker that was the source of the eerie electronic howl. Little did Naru know that at that very second, Su had just hit the emergency launch preparation button and was even now preparing to flee her hidden laboratory for her underground launch hanger.

_What in the hell is going on?!_ The now panicky girl thought wildly, clamping both hands tightly over her ears in an effort to block out the nerve-jarring sound. To make things even worse, Naru's already frazzled nerves weren't being helped any by a loud and annoyingly persistent beeping sound that was rapidly increasing in both pitch and intensity. The radiation meter built into Su's upstairs reactor control panel was starting to go off the scale as her highly illegal atomic pile rapidly approached its catastrophic meltdown.

"_Oh, Shit! Oh, shit!"_ Naru gasped as the penny finally dropped. _"I think that something's gone wrong with Su's atomic reactor…! Bu-but that means-? That means-?!"_

The heat level in the room was by now becoming intense, but unknown as of yet to the scared teen, it wasn't only heat waves that were beating at her exposed face, arms and legs. Even as she stared at the rapidly multiplying puffs of flame and swirling smoke as further bushes and trees began to ignite, Naru began to feel an odd sensation like thousands of pins and needles pricking at her bare skin. A moment later, she consciously became aware that a strange metallic taste was on her tongue…

_Ohmygod!! _Naru's mind screamed. _I'm at ground zero of a nuclear reactor breach!!_

As that awful realization burned into her numbed brain, an overwhelming sense of weakness and hopelessness engulfed Naru's tensed up body, seemingly draining her of all mental and physical energy. Then Naru's trembling knees failed her, and the aghast teen slumped down onto the hard concrete floor, hands at her mouth, eyes huge and streaming with tears as she realized in horror and despair that it was now far, far too late for her to flee far enough away from the malfunctioning reactor to have even the slightest chance of survival. Naru was far from being an expert on atomic physics, but she did know that when a nuclear reactor suffered a catastrophic meltdown, at the very least the breached core would totally contaminate its surroundings for miles around – and in this case, her, as well - with a lethal dose of hard radiation. Invisible death that no doubt was even now irradiating the very room that she had been unsuspectingly sitting around in…!

That being said, Naru now also knew with sickening certainty that no matter what she might do to try to escape the inevitable, it would be nothing but an exercise in futility. She was already doomed. Even worse, her impending death from radiation sickness was going to be a particularly slow and agonizing one…

At _that_ pleasant thought, time seemed to slow down almost to a standstill as the icy chill of terror blew through Naru's body and her mind, freezing her into place where she had fallen.

…Surely – surely something this terrible couldn't be happening to her…? Not here, not in the much loved home of her and her friends…

It is amazing how imminent death focuses the mind on what is really important in life. And such held true for Naru. The despairing thought of never again seeing the young man whom she had so cruelly wronged - the person who Naru was only now realizing, in a blinding flash of insight, she truly was in love with - galvanized the doomed teen's numbed mind into action once again.

_N-no! Not like this? Not like this! I'm too young to die! And I-I haven't even told Keitaro how I really feel about him yet. Oh, Keitaro…!_

Raising up her head as the last few moments of her life ticked away, Naru screamed out in her anguish and despair:

"_Ohmygod!! I'm gonna die before I've even discovered what true love really is! Keitaroooo!!"_

-:-:-:-:-:-

The Location: Su's time machine, the Negative Universe.

The Date: 2002, Doomsday, exactly three-and-a-quarter minutes before the detonation.

"All right, Keitaro, are you all set?" Su asked him, her demeanor switching from cheerful to serious all of a sudden as she reached down to unbuckle her safety harness in preparation for her own active part in their highly dangerous rescue mission. "I've got all the data that I need to rematerialize us in the exact spot that we have to be in my old room," the Molmol woman then told him with anticipatory satisfaction. "I'll be reopening the wormhole at its full size inside my room in exactly one minute."

Keitaro's already thumping heart accelerated even more at the thought that there was now only sixty seconds to go until their moment of destiny.

And _she_ was only a matter of seconds away, too…separated from him by only a gossamer thin wafer of rapidly elapsing time and space.

_Naru._

"_Ah-heh?_ Yeah, I'm onto it. Let's – _'gulp!'_ - do this."

Slipping free from his restraints, the youthful man hurriedly stood up in the cramped cockpit, and then moved back to where the exit hatch and landing ramp were situated. Taking her cue, Tama-chan, resplendent in her own tiny radiation suit, glided down onto his now hooded head, ready to play her part in the audacious rescue, as well.

_"Forty seconds,"_ Su called out to them both, her own excitement rising again at the nearness of their objective. She gave her control panel a quick scan. "All of the pods are primed and ready for launch. Automatic landing sequence on, _now."_

The sweating Keitaro barely registered the words of his pilot. His mind was totally fixated on the unbelievable fact that he would soon be springing out of the time machine back into the long lost and bitterly missed world he had known as a young man. A world that for a quarter century had been far less than ash.

The atomic detonation had seen to that, all too well.

But now – they were back before the terrible disaster had even happened. And with the power to save their long dead friends from the oblivion that had snuffed them out, all those long years ago.

To the shivering, tensed up ex-landlord, ex-Tokyo U hopeful, and now full-time father, this was an astonishing, joyous, terrifying, sobering, wonderful thought, all at the same time.

He just didn't know what to think any more…

"Kei-Baby?" Su's anxious voice came back to Keitaro, jolting him out of his numbed reverie.

"Oh-? Yes, Su?"

"Don't freeze up on me when you see Naru again, okies?" Kaolla's voice held a touch of sympathy as she continued, "I was there, so I know what you went through when you realized that she was dead, so I also understand what you must be feeling now that you're about to see her again. But now's _not _the time for fooling around. We both know if we, Naru and any of the others are to survive this, speed is of the essence here."

"I know." Keitaro set his teeth resolutely. "And I won't let you or the others down. I promise."

"Good, Kei-Baby. I'm set, now, as well." Su took in a deep breath. "Once we land, just follow the plan. You get Naru and Motoko on board; I'll go get Shinobu, and then Kitsune and Kanako, if I can find them. Tama-chan just has to concentrate on finding and bringing Mutsumi back here."

Keitaro nodded. "I got it."

"Myuh, myuh," Tama-chan confirmed as well, from her perch on Keitaro's head.

"Twenty seconds to go," Su counted. "And _please, please, please_ be careful, both of you! Don't forget that once I send us through the wormhole back into 2002, we only have _two minutes_ to get in, and out. If we stay any longer than that, we all die, so once those two minutes are up, the time machine will automatically lift off and leave without anyone not on board. So, if you miss the boat, you miss it for good. Got that, Lover?"

"Y-yeah, I understand," the overwrought Keitaro shakily replied, a cold sweat beginning to run down his involuntarily shivering back from the nervous tension he was under. Furthermore his mouth now inexplicably felt to be as dry as a bone, and his constricted throat seemed to have an object the size of a bowling ball stuck in it. Not to mention that he desperately needed to hit the can again. "Let's – let's just get this over and done with, shall we?"

_I can do this, _he urged himself, forcing all other thoughts to the back of his mind._ I may be a bundle of nerves and not very brave, but Naru and the others, they're all relying on Su and I to save their lives. I just can't stand by and watch them all die again. I won't let them down – I won't!_

"Okay, brace yourself for the return of gravity," Su declared, matching Keitaro's brave, though pale-faced grin and thumbs-up with those exact same gestures of her own. "I'm opening the wormhole-" Su checked the digital timer, just as the last glowing red digit flicked to zero - "_Now!"_

-:-:-:-:-:-

The Location: Inside Su's old room at the Hinata Apartments.

The Date: 2002, Doomsday, exactly two minutes before the nuclear detonation.

Even though it was a certainty that she would soon be dead from radiation poisoning, the distraught Naru had no desire at all to burn to death in the blazing inferno that Su's jungle room was rapidly becoming. Red-hot sparks were already beginning to fly around the enclosed space from the multitude of blazing trees and bushes, and her hair and clothes felt like they would begin to smoulder at any second.

_My god! I've got to get out of here…! The heat – it's too much!_

Even as the terrified teen was attempting to rise back to her trembling feet before fleeing out into the hallway to escape the blistering wall of heat, an extraordinary sight caught her eye.

Between her untenable position and the shimmering reactor casing, a vast, slowly rotating whirlpool of what looked to be translucent, purple-hued water had suddenly materialized out of thin air. If that in itself wasn't strange enough, a huge, slivery, UFO-like craft then glided out of the bizarre whirlpool, to land with a bone-jarring thump on the reinforced concrete floor, its mammoth bulk instantly blocking out and reflecting away from her the worst of the radiant heat pouring from the malfunctioning atomic pile.

Despite her almost overwhelming terror at what was happening to her, the still kneeling Naru froze like a statue again at the unbelievable sight she was witnessing through the clouds of rolling smoke. Then her jaw hit the floor once more as several other amazing things happened all at once.

With a chorus of loud whooshes, eight dome-shaped pods arced up and away in all directions from their mounts on the exterior of the strange craft, to rapidly vanish out of her range of vision. At the exact same time, a door slid open in its near side, and a retractable access ramp simultaneously clanged down onto the floor, upon which two recognizably human shapes came running down into the burning room. Naru wasn't sure, but she then thought that she caught a fleeting glimpse behind the swirling, acrid smoke of a third, much smaller person who had stealthily followed the first two out of their futuristic conveyance. But then her attention was immediately drawn back to the first two, larger silver-suited figures. One of them was bounding off at an angle though the fiery haze of smoke and sparks, the second one was heading directly towards her!

As Tama-chan lifted off from his head and darted off like a bullet towards the nearest open window, Keitaro slammed to a halt at the sight of the terrified girl kneeling next to the open doorway of Su's old room. Even after the passage of a quarter of a century, he instantly recognized just who it was, sprawled out right there in front of him…

…The vision of loveliness that he had waited half a lifetime to see once again…

_My god…! Naru…sh-she's so…beautiful…!_

"_Kei-Keitaro?!"_ Naru began, her perfect mouth and tear-filled eyes widening with shock at the totally unexpected sight of her strangely dressed landlord standing only meters away from her. Despite Keitaro's unconventional attire, Naru easily recognized the man whom she had only just realized that she loved, as she could see his familiar face through the transparent visor of his full body suit. Momentarily forgetting her own frightful predicament as concern for the welfare of her hapless fellow student and a surge of adrenalin simultaneously coursed through her body, the doomed teen scrambled back to her unsteady feet, mouth opening to scream out a desperate warning to him.

"_Keitaro, run! There's-!"_

Despite his avowed promise to Su not to freeze up when he came face-to-face with Naru again, such was the import of the moment that Keitaro couldn't even speak as he gazed at long last upon the distraught figure of his long lost love. Luckily, his subconscious mind knew exactly what to do, even if his conscious mind had momentarily zoned out and lost the plot.

Even as the frantic Naru tried to warn him of his peril, Keitaro's finger instinctively tightened on the trigger of the stubby, pistol shaped M18L taser that he was holding in his right hand. The two barb-tipped probes attached to the high voltage insulated wire sped on their way-!

_Thwik-thwik!_ Came the sound of impact as the twin probes buried themselves in the flabbergasted Naru's curvy chest.

_Tak-tak-tak_ went the fifty thousand volt electric current.

"_Whaaaah-haaah-hahhh!!"_

THUMP! _Twitch, twitch._

"S-sorry, Naru," Keitaro stammered, jumping forward to kneel at the pale and gasping girl's side as she spasmodically jerked and twitched on the concrete floor where she had fallen. Hurriedly yanking out the twin taser probes, barbs and all, he flipped the helpless teen over and then stabbed a hastily drawn hypodermic needle into her shapely butt, eliciting another squawk from the almost totally paralyzed girl. After giving Naru the anti-radiation shot, he slung her over his shoulders and tottered off as fast as he could towards the open door of their waiting time machine.

_Damn! When she recovers, Naru is going to give me hell for this,_ Keitaro worried, as he flung his ex-dream girl headlong into their bizarre conveyance. He didn't have time for niceties, such as buckling her into a seat. However, the powerful jolt of electricity she had just received would keep Naru immobilized for at least another five minutes – plenty of time to strap her in properly after they had completed their rescue mission and departed the doomed locality. As Naru bounced off the padded far wall and limply collapsed down onto the – luckily for her - equally soft floor, Keitaro breathed out a huge sigh of relief at having saved at least her, even as he turned and dashed off towards the doorway again, desperate to make it to the roof and collect Motoko before their time ran out – for good.

_Twenty seconds!_ He panted to himself, catching a quick glimpse of the time on his watch as he pounded down the hallway towards the outside staircase. _Only a minute and forty seconds to go! Run, run!!_

-:-:-:-:-:-

"_Shinobuuu!"_ Su cried out as she ricocheted into the second floor laundry room, sliding to a halt on the waterproof floor. "Shinobu, you've gotta come with me, quic-_huh?!"_

_Hello, she isn't here after all! Maybe she's already gone up to the laundry platform with the washing?_ Su anxiously thought, her huge-eyed gaze darting apprehensively around the unexpectedly empty room. Then the Molmol woman breathed out a hearty sigh of relief as she remembered where Keitaro was going. _But if she has, things'll still be cool because she'll run into Kei-Baby up there, and he'll be able to get her out with Motoko! I'd best see if I can find Kitsune and Kanako in the dining hall…!_

Leaping back out into the hallway again, Su pounded off at high speed in the direction of the Kitchen complex. Hopefully, she'd have better luck with her frantic search for her missing friends in there.

Unbeknown to Su, once again she would be out of luck.

-:-:-:-:-:-

On her comfy couch in the Hinata Apartments lobby, Mitsune Konno stirred, and then rolled over, her eyes flickering half open. Was that a tremor of some sort that had just disturbed her from her before lunch beauty sleep…?

No sooner had Kitsune awakened to full consciousness than a second shiver rippled through the huge building, causing the walls and staircase to her rear to sway and creak alarmingly for a moment or two, before settling back to their normal, motionless state. Once the gentle rocking had ceased, only a few wispy clouds of dislodged dust drifting down from the ceiling gave notice that the sudden pair of quakes had happened at all.

_Yikes. There's another one, _the now alarmed young woman thought_. Ah wonder what's goin' on? Ah'd best get up and find out…_

Rubbing and blinking the sleep from her eyes, the fox girl hurriedly sat up from her repose, swinging her long, smooth legs down off the couch. She then glanced uneasily across the room towards the reception counter, where the tense and alert form of Kanako Urashima was staring anxiously back at her.

"Hey, Kanako," Kit called out in nervous curiosity to the other girl. "What do ya think is going on? Were those a coupla earthquakes that Ah just felt?"

"I don't know," came the terse reply from the equally edgy Goth girl. "But the whole building _did_ rock for a moment again just then."

Kit grimaced, a sudden chill racing up her back. "Aw, shoot! Ah _hate_ earthquakes."

"As do I," Kanako stated, moving around from behind the counter in preparation for her departure as she spoke. "I suggest that we both evacuate ourselves from the premises just in case those jolts are a prelude to a larger, more violent quake."

"Good idea," Kitsune agreed with alacrity, jumping back up onto her slippered feet. "Ah'm comin' with ya!" _Just in case,_ she reassured herself.

-:-:-:-:-:-

Less than ten seconds after the nervous pair had taken their hurried leave through the front doorway, Su slid down the banister of the staircase into the lobby. Leaping onto the floor, she then stared around at her empty surroundings in a considerable state of agitation.

"Aw, phooey! Kitsune isn't down in the lobby, either," the Molmol woman wailed, beating her gloved left fist against the wooden handrail in rapidly building frustration. "And neither is Kanako! _Darn it! Darn it! _And I've got less than a minute left until we have to get the heck out of here, too!"

Forcing herself to calm down, Su tried to think rationally about the increasingly more desperate situation that she found herself in. So far, despite her best efforts to locate her friends, she hadn't managed to save any of the other residents – well, not human ones, anyway. She _had_ run into Kuro, whom she had discovered sleeping in Kanako's room upon her precipitatious arrival there, and had sent the huge eared black cat off packing to the time machine in her room. Unfortunately, that had been her only success. And the beautiful time traveller knew all too well that her window of time at their doomed former home was rapidly running out.

"But if Kitsune and Kanako aren't down here, and they aren't in their rooms, the dining hall or the common room, either, then where could they have-_hey?!_ Maybe they're in the hot springs?! I've got just enough time to check it out, then get the heck back to the time machine before it leaves without me! _Gangway!"_

-:-:-:-:-:-

Moving so fast that she was but a blur, Tama-chan came barrelling down the side stairway, and then swooped in like a swallow through the open front doors of the Hinata Tea Rooms. Unable to totally halt her forward momentum across the dining room in time, the flying turtle executed a last second, almost right-angled turn in mid air, only to graze and bounce off a large bag of green tea before belly flopping down onto the service counter, right under Mutsumi Otohime's startled nose.

"Oh, hi, Tama-chan," Mutsumi laughed, smiling down at the tiny _onsen tamago_, the friendly young woman totally unaware that she had less than a minute and a half left to live. _"Fu, fu._ So what's the big hurry? And why are you dressed in that strange outfit-?"

"_Myu, myuh-myuh-myuh-myuh, myuh!"_ The flying turtle blurted out, waving her flippers with agitation, as she cut off the confused looking turtle girl mid-word. _"Myuh-myuh!"_

As she listened to what the turtle had to say, all of the color drained from Mutsumi's face, and a cold sweat flew from her own brow as the full implications of what was about to happen sank in.

"_Oh my goodness!_ _An_ _atomic explosion,_ you say? That-that's not good, is it? Are we both going to die?!"

"_Myuh-myuh!!"_

"You…you can save me if I hurry?! Golly! All right, Tama-chan, let's go!"

Quickly the mismatched pair dashed for the front doorway of the luckily still empty building, the last party of customers having departed the premises a few minutes before Tama-chan's high-speed arrival.

Even as the turtle lady burst out of the ramshackle old café onto the sunlit street, then turned up the path that led to the soon to be obliterated Hinata Apartments complex, her long, braided, dark brown hair flying out behind her like a tail, Tama-chan put her emergency escape plan into effect.

"_Myuh, myuh,"_ the tiny turtle urgently suggested, from her flight pattern just above the frantic Mutsumi's twin-antennaed head.

"Wh-what?" Mutsumi stumbled to a halt as her turtle pal's words registered in her shocked mind. "Oh, good idea, Tama-chan! You can travel a lot faster than I can up the stairway, can't you?"

Reaching upwards, Mutsumi quickly pushed her shaking hands through the twin safety straps and then tightly grasped the carrying handles built into each side of Tama-chan's strange, metallic outfit. "I'm all set," the frightened young woman informed her diminutive rescuer. "But can you fly me all of the way up to Su's room in time for us to escape? How much longer do we have left before the explosion, anyway?"

"Myuh!" Tama-chan informed her as they both lifted off from the path, the tiny turtle beating all four of her flippers so fast she resembled an accelerating yellow and green hummingbird.

"_Thirty-five seconds? Waaah! Go, Tama-chan, go!"_

Needing no further encouragement, Tama-chan redoubled her efforts. Now rapidly gaining both speed and altitude, the valiant pet turtle labored her way back up the slope of the hill, carrying the dangling dead weight of her friend towards the one and only chance for their continued survival.


	7. Chapter 7

_Hiyas! Since I've only got a couple of chapters left to go with this story, I've decided to finish 'Love Hina: Doomsday' off first before updating 'Love Hina: Crime and Punishment.' This way I can devote all of my attention to each story in turn, and so do a much better and faster job of writing them._

_Unfortunately, I have a lot less spare time for my writing at the moment, which means that I can't update as fast as I used to, either. So sorry to my 'Love Hina: Crime and Punishment' readers for the long wait between new chapters. However, the next chapter of this story should be up in about one week, so stay tuned._

_Anyway, let's see_ what else _can go wrong with Keitaro and Su's rescue attempt, shall we?_

-:-:-:-:-:-

**LOVE HINA: DOOMSDAY  
**_**CHAPTER SEVEN**_

By Doctor-T

-:-:-:-:-:-

Just as Tama-chan was rocketing down the slope towards the Hinata Tea Rooms, Keitaro, puffing loudly from his strenuous physical exertions, came bolting up the flight of wooden steps and out onto the wide, sun-splashed expanse of the laundry platform. Skidding to a halt on the sturdy boards, the cold sweat of anxiety flying from his forehead, Keitaro then saw with a tsunami-sized surge of joyous relief that Motoko Aoyama was indeed doing her training exercises up here, just as Su had claimed she would be. The tall and slender figure of the kendo girl was frozen in mid-kata at the far end of the wooden platform, her beautiful face turned towards him with an expression of surprise clearly visible upon it.

As he stared with panting relief at his long lost companion, Keitaro let out a gulp as he uneasily realized that Motoko's distant position meant that she was currently out of range of his second taser. That uncomfortable fact meant if the very dangerous kendo girl proved to be uncooperative to his verbal efforts to save her from her grisly fate, he would have to get much closer to her before he could attempt to physically subdue her. But actually doing that might prove to be very risky to his health, should the always suspicious Motoko take what he was trying to do the wrong way – which, judging by his past, painful experiences with her, was very likely.

Still, for the sake of her life, he had to try. And he only had one minute and fifteen seconds left to do it!

"Motoko! Thank god you _are_ up here," the ex-landlord cried out, beckoning frantically to the motionless teen kendoist. "We're all in deadly danger, so you've gotta come with me, _right now!"_

"_Who-who the hell are you?!"_ Motoko yelled out, ignoring Keitaro's words as she furiously pointed her _bokken_ at him. "This is a girls dormitory! No men allowed, so _get out!"_

_Oh, crap! She doesn't recognize me in this get-up, _Keitaro abruptly realized, mentally kicking himself for not forseeing that possibility. Disregarding the risk of exposing himself to dangerous radiation in the urgency of the moment, he quickly pulled the mask of the self-sealing radiation suit up off his face so that the angry, mistrustful teen could see his true identity. "Motoko, it's me, Keitaro! Listen-"

"_What? Urashima?"_ Motoko burst out, lowering her _bokken_ a little at the sight of his face. Then her surprise at Keitaro's sudden appearance in such outlandish garb rapidly changed back into her usual unthinking derision for him as a person. "What are you babbling on about, you imbecile?" she continued, an annoyed frown appearing on her face at having her training session disturbed, despite her heart having given a quick flutter in her chest once she realized just who the intruder was. "And why are you dressed in that ridiculous looking silver outfit? Is this some sort of a strange S & M fetish of yours?"

"_No! You've gotta believe me, Motoko,"_ Keitaro pleaded to her, dashing across the platform towards the armed and dangerous teen whom he was desperate to save, despite the very real risk she posed to his own health and safety. "Su and I, we-!"

"Stop right where you are!" At her landlord's sudden move forwards, Motoko had instantly brought her _bokken_ up into a 'on guard' position again. "I don't know what's going on with you, Urashima, but no-doubt it's something underhanded and perverted! Take one more step towards me and you'll be waking up in the infirmary!"

"_But-but-?!"_ Keitaro began to protest, hurriedly skidding to a halt once again as his instincts warned him that Motoko wasn't kidding. And the shrill voice at the back of his mind kept reminding him that if he were to be rendered unconscious by her, then they both would be dead in just less than one minute.

Still, the anxiety-filled Keitaro figured that he was in taser range of the bristling Motoko now – _just._ So, he still had a chance to save them both…_if_ he could get the two barb-tipped probes past her guard. But – knowing all too well of Motoko's competency at kendo - that was a very big '_if'_…!

"And what is that infernal racket that I can hear," the tall girl angrily continued, referring to the high pitched wail of the siren in Su's room, which was clearly audible even up on the laundry platform. "I can't concentrate on my training with that unholy din…"

Then the highly suspicious Motoko stopped speaking in mid-sentence as she leaned forward to take a closer look at the pale, sweaty face of her landlord, a puzzled look appearing in her formerly scowling, olive-green eyes.

"Urashima, how did you get that tan? And you look to be…older…somehow. _Why?_ What happened to you?"

"I look older because I _am_ older! _Twenty-five years_ older, to be precise," Keitaro cried out, stretching his arms in appeal towards the now confused, though still tense girl. "But never mind that, now. Motoko, _please?!_ You've gotta come with me right now, or else it'll be too late!"

Motoko retreated another step. "K-keep your hands off me, Urashima, you – you molester!" she snapped at him, unable to trust him even now. The tall teen warily eyed his strange looking outfit again, and added, "I don't know what's come over you since this morning, but if you think that I'm going to play a part in your sick role-playing fantasies-?!"

Just then, the entire building beneath them gave a slight lurch, accompanied by the ominous creaking sound of wooden beams shifting under the sudden stresses they were being exposed to.

"What…what the heck was that?" Motoko gasped out, her trained body instinctively adjusting her balance to compensate for the sudden jolt. "An earthquake…?"

"_No, there's a fucking atomic bomb going to go off under us in less than a minute!!"_ Keitaro screamed at her, his heart hammering with fear at that heart-stopping reminder of what was coming. _"Please, Motoko, please?! I can save your life, but you've got to come with me right now!"_

"N-no. No, this is – this must be some sort of a trick?!" the pale-faced kendo girl shot back, stabbing her _bokken_ forward to halt her unmanly manager's once-more attempted advance. "Stay back, Urashima, I'm warning you!"

However, by now, Motoko was badly shaken by what she was seeing and hearing. For she could tell just from looking at the expression on Keitaro's strangely older-seeming face that he honestly believed that they were both in mortal peril. And she could also clearly see in his pleading eyes that he badly wanted her to trust him, but right now she found that she just couldn't do that...!

If the real truth were to be told, Motoko was hiding an uncomfortable secret about herself. For, hidden deep in a corner of her now pounding heart, she was harboring a secret desire for her usually weak and wimpy manager - even if she did mentally fight every single day against the very notion of her having any such thing. But this was a battle that she had already lost; her secret desire had already won out over the rational arguments of her confused mind.

And if the uneasy kendo girl had harbored any lingering doubts about this shocking realization, she only had to think of the very disturbing, erotic dream that she had been having, on almost a nightly basis for the last month, about the two of them being together in her bed, and..._oh, Kami-sama!_

In the end, the flustered Motoko had no choice but to admit to herself that for some wholly unfathomable reason, she really _was_ attracted to Keitaro. But she had also silently vowed that hell would freeze over before she would ever admit that to any of the other residents, let alone confess it to _him_.

So, even though Motoko was secretly infatuated with the unsuspecting Keitaro, her instinctive distrust of him - whom she considered, largely thanks to Naru's libellous embellishments about his continual peeping of her and the other female residents, to be an immoral, lecherous pervert - kept her from accompanying the agitated young man back inside the shuddering, creaking building. And what was that the loser had babbled to her just then about an atomic bomb, of all things, about to explode underneath them? What utter nonsense!

No, this had to be some sort of a scam that he was running on her – probably to lure her into some private, out of the way storage room where he would then attempt to feel her up. 'By accident', of course. And, her strange dream notwithstanding, she sure wasn't ready for anything of _that_ nature with him just yet!

At Motoko's stubborn, pig-headedness, the now frantic Keitaro realized that he had no choice. Whipping out his second taser, he pointed it at the bristling girl.

_Fuuuuck! I knew that I should have let Su come up here and collect Motoko! But can I carry her all of the way down the steps and down the hallways to Su's room in less than one minute? God, I don't know, but I have to try…!_

"I'm so sorry, Motoko," he cried out, real anguish in his voice. "I have to do this if I'm to save you, I have no choice! Please forgive me!"

At Keitaro's totally unexpected actions, Motoko's eyes grew wide with disbelief, and then her mouth twisted in rage as she backed up against the railing at the far end of the platform. _"I knew it!"_ the now furious teen shrieked, waving her hardwood blade at the shaking _ronin,_ her cheeks reddening and an unintentional tone of disappointment in her voice at having Naru's previous warnings to her about his questionable morality now confirmed beyond all doubt. "I _knew_ that this was a trap for me, Urashima, you dishonorable, sick-minded freak! You wanted all along to render me senseless, and then have your perverted way with me while I was helpless, didn't you-?!"

"No, that's not it at all!" her manager protested, blushing at the implication. "You'll understand why I had to do this when you wake up again!"

_Forty-five seconds!_

Then he pressed the trigger - just as the entire building shuddered and creaked again – this time, far more violently! The sound of shattering glass and smashing tiles loudly registered in their ears, and a thick column of twisting black smoke began to pour out of the broken roof, from directly above where Su's burning third floor room was located.

Taken by surprise and momentarily thrown off balance by the second, stronger jolt, the angry Motoko nevertheless managed to twist her body to one side and deflect the twin barbs from the taser with her _bokken_. Unfortunately in doing so, she lost her footing and tumbled over the wooden railing, plummeting down towards the hard and unforgiving ground, some three stories below-!

…Only to be deftly snatched out of mid-air, with a painful wrench to her entire body, by a weird flying thing that had come swooping around the front corner of the building!

As she felt her arms and legs being securely grasped by metal restraints, Motoko let out an involuntary yell of fright. She gaped upwards in astonished disbelief at the flying monstrosity that had just saved her from a three-story drop - just as the noose of a hurriedly thrown rope wrapped itself around her left ankle. Then something yanked violently and painfully at her lassoed leg, and she felt a weighty object attached to the rope being dragged along through the air below her as she was carried off at high speed towards the open grounds behind the apartment building.

Motoko had just been seized by one of Su's rescue pods, sparing her from a nasty fall. However, the presence of the rope swinging below the trapped girl's agonizingly sore left ankle now prevented the flying robot pod from closing its built-in, protective transparent dome over her prone body, leaving the shocked kendo girl exposed to the air rushing past her speeding, metallic captor.

Jerking her pain-filled eyes hurriedly downwards to see what she was hooked up on, the pale-faced, panicked Motoko saw to her astonishment, a small, black-haired and ponytailed figure, dressed like her in a white _kimono_ and red _hakama_, with _zori_ sandals on her feet and even a small, hardwood _bokken_ strapped across her back, clinging on for dear life to the swaying rope some four meters below her!

"Don't worry, Motoko-_Oneesama,_" the strange girl cried out to the huge-eyed, trapped kendo girl. "I'm here to rescue you!"

_Wha?!_ _How does this child know my name?_ The totally flabbergasted and not a little scared kendo girl thought, her mind struggling to comprehend just what was happening to her. _And why is she calling me, __'_Oneesama'? _I don't recognize her at first glance._ _But she's dressed as I am, so…could she have accompanied someone from our clan who is paying me an unannounced visit from Kyoto…?_

_Aaaargh! Just what in the hell is going on?!_

"Who – who are you?" Motoko called down to the newcomer in a more shaky tone than she would have liked. "Are you a member of the House of Aoyama, as I am?"

"No. I am Motoko Urashima-chan, _Oneesama_."

"Mo-Motoko – _Urashima?!"_ the older Motoko gasped out, her eyes somehow managing to expand even wider at that unexpected revelation. "Are…are you, perchance, telling me that you are a relative of _Keitaro_ Urashima?! And this thing holding me – what is it? And where is it taking us?"

"Yes, I am. But please, no more questions just at the moment, _Oneesama._ I'm going to climb up to you, and once we have reached safety, I'll free you from the rescue pod. Hold on…"

"You're coming up here?" Motoko called back, her eyes flickering from the small shape to take in the wooded landscape now rushing past far below them. "B-be careful, then…!"

_Kami-sama! We must be at least twenty meters above the slope of the hill – and we're moving fast, too! If she were to slip and fall from this height…!_

Then the tiny girl, her clothes rippling and long black hair being whipped back behind her from the sheer swiftness of their ride through the air, was silent as she concentrated on her difficult task. Slowly and carefully the six-year-old inched her way up the rotating rope, with the aid of pre-tied, regularly spaced knots, towards her captive hero.

_Wow! This child is possessed of some skill_, the anxious kendo girl mused as she stared with confused apprehension down at the surprisingly agile youngster._ I wonder who could have trained her? If she really is an Urashima, like she claims to be, probably Hinata-oba-san is responsible…"_

Just then, Motoko was distracted from the climbing girl by what looked to be a huge firework roaring up into the sky on a tail of smoke and fire on the town side of the rapidly shrinking Hinata Apartments complex – part of which now seemed to be obscured by a thick column of black smoke! Gaining speed with every passing second, the strange object rapidly receded with a twinkle of reflected light into the blue immensity of the sky, leaving only the distant echoing rumble of its engine and a fading vapor trail to mark its swift passing.

_What – what in the hell was that? Could it…have been one of Su's…? But if it was…then where is she going in that thing?_

_And what's with all that smoke I see billowing up from the roof?! Maybe something really is going on back there, like Urashima tried to tell me just before. If so, I must escape from this thing and get back there, post-haste! I have to concentrate and focus my _ki_…!_

A moment later, the robot craft flew up and over the summit of the huge hill that faced out over the distant Hinata Apartments complex, and far beyond that, the broad curve of Sagami Bay, the drone shedding airspeed as it prepared to bank and dive down the reverse slope. Instantly, Motoko saw her chance. They were now only about ten meters above the ridge, and their speed had now momentarily dropped down to probably less than thirty kilometers an hour.

"_Light cutting flash!"_

Flicking her trapped wrists and feet backwards, Motoko's focused _ki_ blew all four metal grapples that were pinioning her limbs, dropping her like a stone from the grasp of the machine. Even as she started to fall, in a single swift cut, the _ki_-charged _bokken_ still clenched in her right hand clove the device above her almost in two! In a continuation of her technique, the precision stroke flashed downwards, cutting through the rope that bound the strange girl to her badly aching ankle.

"_Brace yourself, Motoko-chan,"_ the kendo girl yelled as the pair plummeted at an angle down towards an open, grassy patch in the forest below the ridgeline, their captor smashing down into the bank just off to the right of their hopefully soft point of coming impact. _"We're gonna hit hard!"_

-:-:-:-:-:-

"_Fuuuuck!!"_ Keitaro screamed as he saw the elusive kendo girl slip and tumble backwards over the railing, to drop downward out of his sight. _"Motokooo!! Oh, no, no, no, no!"_

Dropping the taser and flinging himself forward to the edge of the platform, the frantic Keitaro was just in time to see an oval shaped shadow racing along the lawn far below, to vanish a split second later around the edge of the huge old building. A faint cry in Motoko's voice came to his straining ears, and then – nothing.

But, since there was no sprawled out body on the grass at the foot of the platform, that could only mean-?

_Of course?! One of Su's rescue pods must have caught her in mid air! Thank god-!_

"_Motoko, I'm so sorry!"_ Keitaro yelled out regretfully in the direction that the shadow had gone in, even though Motoko was probably well out of earshot by now. _"But, since one of Su's pods has got you, you should manage to survive this fuck up – I hope?!"_

Then Keitaro's gaze hurriedly returned to his watch, and he blanched at the time he had left to save himself.

"Twenty-five seconds?!_ I've gotta get the hell out of here, right now!"_

Then the frightened _ronin_ flung himself back towards the wooden stairs, straining every muscle to make it back to the safety of the time machine before everything turned to custard.

-:-:-:-:-:-

Even as Keitaro was running up the wooden steps on his mission to confront the overly suspicious Motoko on the laundry platform, Kanako and Kitsune were hurrying out through the front doorway of the Hinata Apartments onto the safety of the plaza. Once outside, they then kept moving until they were a respectable distance away from their lofty home. This was a wise precaution to take, as any further tremors could dislodge dangerous falling debris. Only then did both young women come to a halt, turn and stare back up at the towering bulk of the three-story building they had just vacated.

"What's with that siren Ah can hear going off," Kit uneasily asked her companion. "Is it part of some sorta earthquake early warning device of Su's, Ah wonder?"

"I don't know, but I hope that she and the other residents have the good sense to leave the building as we both have done," Kanako remarked to her still edgy-looking older companion. "Or at the very least, take shelter under a sturdy table."

"So do Ah," Kitsune replied, breathing a hearty sigh of relief that they were now out in the open. She wiped her sweaty forehead with the palm of her right hand, then flashed the Goth girl a weak grin. _"'Phew!'_ Ah feel much safer out here. Now, if Ah only had some _sake_ with me to calm mah nerves…"

"The apartments were strengthened against earthquakes as part of the renovations that were carried out on the day that I arrived here," Kanako reassured the fox girl. "So I'm sure that any damage caused by those two small tremors will only be minor in nature-"

"Hey, wait a second, Kanako!" the alert-looking Kit suddenly called out, urgently raising up her right hand, cutting her companion off in mid-sentence. She cocked her head, a puzzled frown appearing on her smooth forehead. "Listen, willya? Ah can hear a sorta faint roaring sound, as well as that siren. What _is _that?"

"I hear it too," Kanako confirmed, her own startled gaze flickering around at their surroundings as she tried to pinpoint the source of the elusive noise, before looking down at the ground next to her feet. "It's coming from – _below us?"_

"Yeah," Kit agreed, scratching at her silvery-brown hair as she stared with a baffled expression down at the worn surface of the cobblestoned plaza. "Ah think so, as well. And…Ah've heard a noise similar to this one before, too. As crazy as this sounds, Kanako, Ah think that's a rocket firing up somewhere under the apartments."

"A rocket?" Kanako repeated, her eyes narrowing, anxiety and puzzlement shining forth in equal amounts. "But who in the…?"

A sudden yell of fright came from over the edge of the plateau, interrupting Kanako's question, and causing both already on-edge girls to involuntarily jump with alarm. As one, the pair whirled around, to stare with foreboding first at the head of the staircase, and then back at each other. That hapless wail had been centered right below where the huge flight of stone steps topped the slope of the hill, and it had been voiced in a very familiar tone by a person that they both knew all too well.

"That was _Oniichan!"_ Kanako gasped out, worry etched on her pale face. "And it sounds like he's in trouble! Come on, we'd best-!"

Then the Goth girl's words froze in her throat as, with a deafening roar, a strange looking flying machine erupted up into sight from the slope of the hill below the top of the staircase. Gaining speed and altitude with every passing second, the mysterious craft raced upwards at a steep angle, rotating gently on its tail of fire as it swiftly receded away into the boundless blue expanse of the sky.

"_What in the hell is going on?!"_ Kanako burst out, her usual impassive façade shattering at the unbelievable sight that she had just witnessed. "I think I just saw my _Oniichan_ on that thing!"

"Damned if Ah know, girly," Kit declared, scratching at her mop of hair again as she stared with shock up at the fiery comet that marked the rapidly vanishing flying machine. "But Ah reckon only one resident coulda built that gizmo we saw take off just then. _Su."_

"_Su?!_ Don't tell me that that Molmol freak has just kidnapped my _Oniichan?"_ Kanako shouted, clenching her fists at the thought. "Why that little-?!"

"Screw that, Kanako, we don't have time," Kit gasped, grabbing the outraged Kanako's shoulders and spinning her around to face the apartments. Then the older girl pointed urgently up at their recently refurbished home. _"Look!_ The third story of the apartments is on fire! We gotta get in there and warn the others!"

"_I – I…!_ You're right, Konno," Kanako conceded, lowering her fists after throwing one last frustrated look at the receding dot of Su's escape craft. "But I'll go upstairs to get the others out, _you_ get on the phone and call the fire briga—_look out!"_

A strange, disc-shaped flying thing had just swooped over the ridge of the roof outlined against the sky high above their heads and down towards them. Before Kanako could even think about trying to evade the device, her arms and legs had been seized with what appeared to be robotic hands, scooping the shocked teen up from the ground and drawing her up, back first, against its flat, padded underside. Next second, a transparent dome snapped into place under the struggling Goth girl, totally sealing her off from the outside world. Then the machine blurred off up and away in an arc towards the summit of the tree-covered hill that backed the grassy plateau, upon which was situated the Hinata Apartments complex.

"_Woah?!"_ Mitsune cried out with fright, instinctively leaping backwards at the sudden abduction of the younger girl. "Kanako! What the-_Uwaaah?!"_

Kitsune had just felt herself being grasped tightly and whirled up into the air with a most unpleasant stomach-churning lurch by a second robot device, this one having dived in unseen from behind her while she had been gaping at the rapidly retreating silvery gizmo that had abducted Kanako. As the plaza fell away at an alarming rate below the terrified fox girl, in an exact repeat of what had just happened to Kanako, a see-through curved sheet of some clear substance slid across to enclose her trapped body, cutting off the rush of fast moving air. Then the bizarre machine that had snatched her was darting off in the same direction as the first one had departed in, gaining speed and altitude with each parting second as it rocketed towards the summit of the tree-covered hill that flanked the wide, grassy expanse behind the now rapidly receding apartments.

-:-:-:-:-:-

Just as Kitsune was being snatched from the front plaza, up on the open-air laundry platform, the returning Keitaro had only managed to take a few hurried strides back towards the staircase when, from out of the blue, an unforeseen disaster had struck him. He suddenly felt his right foot shoot out from under him, and he landed back first, with a loud wail and a jarring thud, on the hard, wooden boards underfoot.

"_Owwie…!"_ the ex-landlord groaned as he somewhat shakily made it back to his unsteady feet a few seconds later, mentally cursing his clumsiness whilst looking down ruefully at the discarded taser he had accidentally trodden on. "Dammit! I should learn to look before I – _oh, shit! The time!_ _Waaaah!!"_

_Oh, god, fifteen seconds left! I'm not going to make it back to Su's room before our time machine departs. I'm a dead man!!_

Just as things were looking their bleakest for his prospects of survival, the frantic Keitaro received a surprise. Even as he staggered forward once again in a no-doubt futile attempt to reach the safety of their rescue craft, a sudden burst of static crackled in his right ear, and then Su's anxious voice came through the miniaturized headset he was wearing.

"Kei-Baby, are you there?!"

"Um, wha-? _Oh, Su!_ Su, I'm on the roof, but I'm almost out of time! I can't get back before the reactor blows up! I don't want you and the others to die, so just leave without me-!"

"Listen, Kei-Baby, I've managed to buy us some more time," the Molmol genius urgently interrupted him. "So calm down, because my reactor isn't going to explode in ten seconds now, after all! And I've also stopped the automatic departure timer, so you won't miss your flight outta here, either."

"_Wha-wha-what?!"_ Keitaro gobbled, his white-as-a-sheet face flickering between fear, disbelief and heartfelt relief at her astonishing statement. "You did that? _When? How?!"_

"I'm back inside the time machine right now, ya see, and this is how I did it. I've just switched the zero-time field back on inside the magnetic shields," Kaolla hurriedly explained to her dumbstruck partner. "Unfortunately they both only reach partway into the interior of my sabotaged reactor, but the zero-time field _is_ slowing down the speed of the building nuclear chain reaction inside the core. It's still going to reach hypercritical mass soon – I can't stop that - but I _have_ gained us maybe another fifty seconds - one minute max - before the reactor finally blows! It's not much, but it's all I can do to help you and Tama-chan right now!"

"What?! If you can do that, then why didn't you use the zero-time field to slow down the reactor when we first arrived here?" Keitaro asked, a baffled look replacing the shocked one on his pale, sweating face.

"There's a good reason, and I'll tell you all about it later! But right now, just stay where you are on the laundry platform, Kei-Baby. You won't be able to make it back inside the time machine with the zero-time field still on and surrounding it. I'm coming up to get you!"

"Oh…?" Keitaro gasped in surprise. "You can do tha-?!"

That very instant, his question was answered in no uncertain fashion. Right before his startled eyes, at the spot centered directly above Su's third floor room, the rotating space-time wormhole interface suddenly erupted upwards through the blazing tile roof, showering broken beams and smashed tiles in all directions. Then the wormhole mouth steadily moved off through the thick clouds of black smoke, to finally hover in mid-air some thirty meters away from the doomed building.

A couple of seconds later, accompanied by the ear-splitting whine of its four manoeuvring jets, the shimmering shape of the time machine drifted up through the gaping, ragged hole in the half destroyed rooftop, the shrill scream of the powerful engines causing the bug-eyed Keitaro to hurriedly re-don his hooded facemask and clamp his hands down hard over his ears in an effort to protect his hearing. Carefully, the Molmol woman manoeuvred the huge rescue craft along the side of the burning apartments, to come to a stationary hover right next to the near edge of the laundry platform. Then the entrance door slid open, the boarding ramp extended outwards to touch the wooden deck, and the more than relieved ex-landlord ran back along it to safety.

Ignoring in the urgency of the moment the semi-conscious Naru, who was still sprawled out on the padded floor, Keitaro dashed past her weakly moving body for the cockpit. Once there, he flung himself into his seat without any further ado, then glanced anxiously at his pilot.

"How much longer have we got?!" he breathlessly asked the very relieved looking Kaolla, strapping himself firmly in as he spoke.

"About forty-five seconds left before the revised time of the detonation, so I'd best get us into position for our departure right now," Su edgily answered as she quickly guided their transport away from the building, turning its front towards the waiting space-time wormhole. "Hey! Where's Motoko?" she then inquired, sparing Keitaro a teary glance. "Wasn't she up on the laundry platform after all?!"

"No, she was, but one of your pods got her and carried her away," Keitaro told the distraught looking woman in a strained voice. "But – I see that there's no one else here with us, except for Naru! What happened to Shinobu, Kitsune and Kanako? And what about Tama-chan and Mutsumi?!"

"I couldn't find them," Su admitted, her sea green eyes now awash with tears of worry and regret as she brought their vehicle to a halt only three meters in front of the lazily spinning hole in space-time. "And I looked everywhere! I did manage to find and save Kuro, though."

"Meow!" that worthy greeted Keitaro, the black cat popping up onto his lap at the mention of his name.

"H-hi, Kuro," Keitaro replied, tears of misery forming in his own eyes. _"Dammit all!_ Su, do…do you think that your rescue pods could have grabbed them, too, like the one that got Motoko? Oh, _please_ say yes?!"

"I dunno. I haven't had time to check their telemetry yet," Su admitted, brightening up a bit at the possibility. "And I did find a note from Shinobu, pinned to the kitchen door, that is addressed to all of the residents, but I haven't had time to read it yet, either," she added with a sniff. "So, just maybe-?" Then she stiffened as her eyes fell upon the inexorably ticking timer.

"Twenty-five seconds left, Keitaro, then we _have_ to make our jump back to 2027," she grimly warned him. "If we don't, we die. And there's still no sign of Tama-chan and Turtle Lady Mutsumi!"

"Oh, god! Don't tell me we've failed to rescue them, too-?" Keitaro cried out. "This just isn't fair!"

At that very instant, in the direction of the side staircase that led down the hill to the Hinata Tea Rooms, Su spotted what she had been praying for. The odd looking shape of a small flying turtle with the figure of a girl hanging on beneath it had just appeared on her screen, the mismatched pair moving rapidly through the air above the slope of the plateau towards their waiting escape craft.

"_There they are, there they are, there they are!"_ She whooped, slapping the also overjoyed Keitaro so hard on his back that she almost winded him. _"Yaaay!!"_

"Ack! _'Cough!' 'Cough!'_ Y-yes, but they've only got fifteen seconds left to get on board before we make our jump, and they're too far away to make it in time," Keitaro gasped out, his heart in his throat, feeling as if his back had been caved in by her blow as he pointed at the unforgiving timer ticking down in front of them.

"_But they gotta make it,"_ Su cried back to him, her eyes full of despair at the frightful predicament of their friends as she quickly switched on an exterior speaker_. "Go, Tama-chan, GO!!"_

-:-:-:-:-:-

Securely held in the grasp of the speeding rescue pod, such was Kit's fear at what was happening to her, her blood pressure was pounding in her head like a kettledrum and she was sure that she would faint at any second. The past few seconds of futile struggle against her metallic bonds had driven home to the fox girl that her arms and legs were securely pinioned, so Kitsune knew with heart stopping certainty there was no way that she could free herself from the secure grasp of her weird, mechanical abductor. And now she, like Kanako, was being carried away, totally helpless, to an unknown and possibly terrifying fate, far from her home and friends.

_Mah god, what's gonna happen ta me?! Ah sure wish that Ah had that _sake_…!_

"_Haaalp!! Ah've been kidnapped by tiny aliens!! Hold the anal prob-Ow-wow! What the f-?!"_ Kit then squawked, as something very sharp – probably a needle of some sort - suddenly emerged out of a hidden compartment and stabbed her right in her ample butt!

"_Yee-aaargh! That's another one,"_ she then hollered a moment later, struggling futility against her bonds as a second stinging sensation burned into her right butt-cheek._ "God-dammit, whatever the hell you are, stop jabbing me in the ass! No anal probing, Ah said!"_

_Ouchie! Hey, I just had a thought. Ma-maybe this gizmo has a cute guy insida it, and he just likes taking his female captives that way…?_

Despite her sorry situation, the fox girl somehow managed a half-smile at the crazy notion that had popped into her bewildered head.

_Heh…! Ah should be so lucky…whoa?! W-what now…?_

Even as the second needle was retracting back into its casing, Mitsune's eyesight inexplicably became blurry, and a great feeling of drowsiness swept over her as the powerful narcotic now coursing through her body took its intended effect. Her head flopped limply forward, her unfocused eyes staring uncomprehendingly down at the green blur of the forested hillside, hurtling past only meters below her.

…_Maybe Ah don't need mah _sake_ after all…? Ah feel pretty good, right about now-Hey? But why are those trees below me startin ta smoke like that…? And what's with the bright light shinin' on 'em…?_

-:-:-:-:-:-

Even as the shocked and scared Kitsune was being carried away from the plaza towards the steep, heavily wooded slope of the towering hill behind the Hinata Apartments, up near the ridgeline on the reverse slope of that very same hill, Motoko and the small, almost duplicate of her were just now rolling back up onto their feet after the crash of their own robot abductor. The pair had been carried for well over a kilometer and a half away from their original location at the apartments, and it looked to the resigned Motoko that she would be in for a long walk back home on her sore left leg.

As she dusted herself off, Motoko first gave the wrecked device a look of distaste - the oval shaped dome comprising its upper surface reminded her a little too much of a large turtle shell for her liking. Then she turned her head to face the small girl, just to assure herself that her tiny would-be rescuer hadn't been harmed by her violent fall from the sky.

"Are…you unhurt, _um,_ Motoko-chan?"

"Yes, thank you, _Oneesama,"_ Little Motoko replied, a huge sweat bead on her forehead, her wide and worried eyes still staring at the crashed flyer as she realized just what a frightening predicament they both now were in, thanks to her idol's rash action in destroying their escape craft. "But you shouldn't have done-!"

"Good. Then let's be on our way," Motoko interrupted, uneasily thinking of the huge fire she had seen burning either next to, or actually inside the Hinata Apartments. "My ankle hurts somewhat, but it seems to be undamaged, and we have quite a distance to cover before we reach the apartments again. I have a feeling that something strange is going on there, and I want to get to the bottom of it as soon as possible."

The kendo girl immediately started to head off uphill towards the nearby ridgeline in preparation for making her way back to her huge old home – only to have the mysterious pre-teen seize her right hand and pull her to a sudden stop.

"No, you mustn't, _Oneesama,"_ Little Motoko urged her hero, tugging frantically at the much larger teen. "We must go downhill, quickly. Hurry, we're almost out of time!"

_In fact, we are out of time, right now, _the tiny kendoist then realized in horror, noticing the two-minute timer on her stopwatch had already reached zero. _But nothing's happened! Why wasn't there an explosion? Maybe my watch is wrong…? But we gotta go…!_

"_Please, please, Oneesama!_ We have to go this way!"

Noticing the scared look on the insistent youngster's face, Motoko reluctantly acquiesced to the odd request. Besides, she couldn't just walk away and leave her six-year-old look-alike out here alone in the wilderness, notwithstanding her considerable abilities, could she? To abandon the girl would be a dishonorable act, and Motoko knew that her conscience would never let her forget it, were she to do just that.

_But _w_hy is this girl insisting that we travel in this direction? The apartments are back that way_, the kendo girl puzzled as she looked down at the tiny tot hurrying along at her side. Then something else stuck in her mind as she scrutinized the fretful looking girl, who kept throwing nervous glances back at the hilltop above them for some strange reason. Except for the size differential, Motoko couldn't deny that she and her diminutive new companion _were_ very, _very_ similar in physical appearance, hairstyle, mode of dress and even mannerisms…

Even earlier on, as they were being whisked away through the air at what must have been well over one hundred and fifty kilometers an hour by the weird flying thing, Motoko had noticed this fact. And now, watching her up close like this, Motoko realized with astonishment that the resemblance between them wasn't just strange, it was positively uncanny. Even with young Motoko-chan's light brown skin color being much darker than her own pale complexion, the kendo girl still couldn't manage to shake the eerie feeling that she was looking at a younger version of herself, as she had been ten years ago.

"Why do you…look like me?" Motoko then asked the young girl. "And why, exactly, is your name the same as mine?"

"I am a student of_ Shinmei-ryū_, just like you are, _Oneesama_, so I wear the appropriate uniform," the mysterious waif replied, looking up at her idol with her anxious look momentarily being replaced by hero worship on her tiny face. "And I am honored that my parents named me after you, _Oneesama_."

"_They did?!"_ the startled older girl exclaimed, coming to an abrupt halt. "And who exactly _are_ your parent-?"

Even as Motoko asked that important question, the sands of time ran out for her old life at the Hinata Apartments.

-:-:-:-:-:-

Thanks to Tama-chan's supreme efforts, she and Mutsumi would have easily made it back to the safety of the time machine with at least twenty seconds to spare - even if Su hadn't managed to extend their rescue window by using the zero-time field to slow the speed of the sabotaged nuclear reactor going supercritical. However, such a sweet state of affairs wasn't to be, for a totally unforeseen event had happened to the rapidly returning turtle, at the worst possible time.

Half way back up the slope to the doomed apartment building, Mutsumi, overcome by anxiety, had unexpectedly fainted in mid-air, her suddenly limp hands releasing her hold on the handles built into Tama-chan's rescue suit. That in itself wouldn't have been so bad, had her wrists not also slipped out of the safety straps as well, sending the senseless turtle girl plummeting down face-first onto the grassy bank! She had bounced twice on impact, and then slowly slid backwards down the hill for a meter or so, before finally coming to a halt in the long grass.

Sweating bullets at the delay, Tama-chan had hurriedly circled back and swooped down to Mutsumi's motionless side, thanking her lucky stars that the hapless young woman hadn't rolled all of the way down to the footpath far below them! However, it had taken the flying turtle almost fifty seconds to tie the dangling straps firmly to Mutsumi's wrists and then get underway again. Time would have run out for them, right then and there, had Su's genius not come up with a way to delay the inevitable, prolonging their lives for a precious sixty seconds more in the process.

And now, as the exhausted Tama-chan and her unconscious passenger finally topped the seemingly never ending slope, the flying turtle saw with a huge sigh of relief that the time machine and the space-time wormhole it had come through had moved out of the apartments and into the open air. Both were now hovering next to each other about thirty meters above the ground, and at a similar safe distance away from the now blazing apartments. She wouldn't have to re-enter the highly dangerous, burning, smoke wreathed building with Mutsumi, after all.

The bad news was that the time machine was on the far side of the plaza, at least one hundred meters away. And the _onsen tamago_ knew, _she just knew_, that their time was nearly up!

A second later, Tama-chan's frightening premonition was confirmed in no uncertain manner. With the crackle of static, Kaolla Su's panicky voice called out to her across the distance separating them, via an exterior speaker on board their now moving escape craft.

"_Tama-chan! Fly directly into the wormhole! You've only got ten seconds left, so that's your only chance! Go! Go!!"_

Putting everything she had into one last sprint, the fatigued little turtle accelerated towards her and Mutsumi's sole, rapidly fading shot at survival, just as the time machine glided forwards into the rotating gateway into the future and vanished from her sight.

As the space/time wormhole itself began to close in the wake of the just departed time machine, the desperate Tama-chan played her trump card. It was now all, or nothing. With a loud popping sound, and then an even louder '_whoosh',_ the short range booster rocket built into the top of the _onsen tamago's_ radiation suit fired, the sudden burst of acceleration nearly jerking open the hastily tied knots that bound the wrists of the comatose Mutsumi to Tama-chan's reinforced full-body radiation suit.

Tama-chan hadn't used the emergency booster earlier on during her rescue of Mutsumi, because the miniscule rocket only had a maximum range of one hundred meters before it ran out of propellant. Luckily, on this occasion, that distance was more than enough. With their linked bodies now almost horizontal, Mutsumi and Tama-chan hurtled like an arrow directly towards and then through the center of the collapsing wormhole, vanishing from that doomed locality with only seconds to spare!

Then, in the midst of the burning, collapsing building directly below and to the left of their almost totally closed space/time escape tunnel, the supercritical nuclear reactor finally blew.

-:-:-:-:-:-

As the Hinata Apartments and everything around it dissolved into white-hot nuclear fire, the expanding shock wave from the colossal detonation seized hold of the escape pod that was carrying the drugged fox girl, nearly flinging it from the suddenly turbulent sky down into the shattering treetops below. But an instant later, the flying pod finally crested the hilltop, and with a gut-wrenching lurch, began to plummet at a steep angle down the forested far side, luckily managing to outrun the deadly, whirling rain of splintered, mostly burning tree remnants and shredded foliage being blown like leaves over the blazing ridge now high above and behind it.

Reaching the valley floor, the still intact and only slightly scorched pod headed off at high speed along the small, stony river at its base for about a kilometer, until its onboard navigation sensors informed the robot device that it had reached its final destination. Swooping up from the waterway, the pod rapidly shed its airspeed, then glided in through the entrance to a rocky, dirt floored cave. There the escape pod finally landed, underside first, onto the soft bed of soil. It simultaneously released its grip of the dazed Mitsune Konno, sending her dropping down onto the inside curve of the enclosing bowl of transparent material.

As the helpless fox girl rolled over onto her back, she dimly noticed out of the corner of her eyes, through the transparent dome surrounding her, her entire range of vision suddenly become shot through by hundreds – no, there must be thousands of curved beams of white light, all rapidly merging into an all-enveloping whole.

Little did Kit know that the entire escape pod was now in the process of being ringed by this perfect sphere of controlled light. Just like the much larger one that Su's time machine had previously used to control the wormhole and capture the tachyon particles, Mitsune was about to be encased in a compact-sized, zero-time field - one that would seal her off from the normal flow of the time stream in the world outside the containment field ringing the pod.

This was also the fate that had befallen the missing Kanako. At a hidden, underground location not all that distant from her own one, the Goth girl was now frozen like a statue in space/time, unable to move, breathe, or even age. And so she would remain, in an unconscious state, until the laser generated zero-time field was switched off once again.

Kitsune's last conscious thought before time stopped for her was why the heck didn't someone turn that darn light off and let her sleep in peace…?

-:-:-:-:-:-

_Next Chapter: But what happened to Motoko and Little Motoko, you may ask? And Shinobu, too? And will Tama-chan and Mutsumi make it through the wormhole alive?_

_Well, all will be revealed - soon!_


	8. Chapter 8

_Hi, and welcome to the second-to-last chapter (or maybe it isn't?) So what happened to the missing residents? Read on and find out!_

-:-:-:-:-:-

**LOVE HINA: DOOMSDAY  
**_**CHAPTER EIGHT**_

By Doctor-T

-:-:-:-:-:-

The Location: Almost half way down the opposing slope of the hill situated directly behind the Hinata Apartments.

The Date: 2002, Doomsday, one millisecond after the nuclear detonation.

As the ridgeline above them suddenly turned into an ominous black silhouette by the pure white light expanding out from the atomic detonation on the other side of the hill, Motoko's half-completed question caught in her throat as she and her young namesake froze in terror. Then, as the trees on the hilltop erupted into roaring flame from the arriving heat pulse, they turned and fled wildly down the green and verdant slope, heading for the hoped-for watery protection of the river snaking along far below them.

But that wasn't to be the worst of it for the terrified pair. Far from it, in fact. For, a few seconds later, the physical shockwave from the nearly fifty kiloton explosion reached the inferno on the ridge, blasting thousands of tonnes of pulverized trees and bushes high into the air above the valley. This crackling, smoking, flame-wreathed debris shower then began tumbling lazily down towards the fleeing refugees, some of the broken logs and larger branches crashing haphazardly down amongst the intact forest trees surrounding the running girls, in shattering explosions of smoke, flame, shredded clouds of leaves and whipping greenery.

And if this fiery rain of wooden death wasn't enough for them to contend with, another lethal hazard rapidly made itself known. Intermixed with the plummeting fireballs of smashed foliage was a luckily far sparser avalanche of hurtling, spinning boulders of all shapes and sizes. These rocky missiles had been dislodged from their beds in the steep slope by the violent earth tremors caused by the shockwave striking the summit of the hill.

Buffeted by the gale-force winds sweeping outwards from the epicentre of the detonation, the pair tumbled down the shaking slope, somehow managing to avoid being struck by any dangerously large fragments of wood or stone, and stay together at the same time. But it was touch and go for the pair, until purely by chance, the older Motoko spotted what could be their only chance at salvation.

As her eyes fell upon the narrow crevice leading into the hillside under a large rocky overhang, the kendo girl immediately saw its possibilities as a safe refuge from the falling rubble, the rapidly growing forest fires and the danger of being swept away by the howling gusts of smoke and debris-laden wind. Skidding to a halt, she shrieked out an order to her much younger companion, whilst pointing frantically at the protected opening that she had so fortuitously discovered.

"_Motoko-chan! In here, quick!!"_

The pair flung themselves under the overhang, then rapidly wormed their way further into the narrow depression in the solid rock, just as a broken and burning tree trunk – one that must have weighed at least a tonne - somersaulted with a series of loud crashes over the opening, to roll on down the slope towards the small river at its base. The panting, white-faced girls had gotten out of its destructive path just in the nick of time!

A second later, the white-hot atomic fireball bubbled up above the hellish looking ridgeline, the radiated heat searing both slopes of the now totally exposed valley far below, almost instantly causing all of the remaining unburnt vegetation to erupt into an even worse conflagration of smoke and fire. Then, outside the narrow mouth of their refuge, the strong wind reversed direction and began to blow back upwards towards the ridge, the smoke and dust-laden breeze rapidly speeding up into another roaring gale as the superheated mushroom cloud sucked in air from kilometers around to fuel its all-consuming firestorm.

As the nuclear storm raged outside, the air inside the shuddering fissure grew hot and smoky, but luckily for the two girls now cowering at the far end of the six meter long natural tunnel, not unbearably so. Even luckier for them, almost the entire width of the nearly three hundred meter high foothill lay between ground zero of the just detonated nuclear reactor and their auspicious refuge. Not even a blast ten times the magnitude of the one that had just occurred could have penetrated this geological barrier of millions of tonnes of solid rock.

Clutching her hands tightly over her ears to try to block out the awesome thunderclap of the explosion as it just now swept over the burning valley at the comparatively tardy speed of sound, Motoko collapsed onto the bare rock floor of their refuge, fighting to regain control of her shattered nerves and her panicky breathing, as did the younger girl. Once the deafening, earth-shaking boom had finally faded back into the howling whistle of the windstorm that was fanning the all-consuming forest fire outside the narrow cave, Motoko used her training to calm her mind, until she could think reasonably coherently once again. Then the kendo girl raised up her still white-as-a-ghost face, and asked her tiny body-double what in the hell had just happened.

The shaken-looking young girl who shared her name then told her the full how-and-why of the horrific tragedy that had just minutes before befallen the township of Hinata Hot Springs, to Motoko's rapidly growing horror as the unbelievable story progressed to its just-experienced, destructive conclusion.

Once the youngster had finished her sorry tale, Motoko buried her own tear-streaked face in her trembling hands for a few seconds, her slender body shuddering with half suppressed sobs as she tried to come to terms with the horrifying reality that her old, beloved and comfortable life at the now destroyed Hinata Apartments had come to a permanent end.

"We-well, what should we do now for the best," the badly shaken kendo girl finally asked out loud, of herself as much as of her tiny companion, once she had managed to pull herself together again. "One thing, though, I _do_ know for a fact. My friends back where the Hinata Apartments used to be are all…all dead. _'Sniff!'_ There is no possibility of any survivors after th-that, and it would be suicide for us to even attempt to return to whatever may remain of Hinata Hot Springs. This is a most…unusual and tragic situation, Motoko-chan, and I…I really don't know what would b-be the correct course of action for us to take at this time…"

_My god! Urashima was right with what he told me before…! He claimed that this was going to happen, and while he may be the definition of pathetic most of the time, he was still brave enough to try to save me. I should have listened to him…! Oh, I hope that he managed to survive…that?!_

"I have a plan, _Oneesama_, but first you must quickly inject yourself with this." Reaching into a hidden pocket in her _kimono_, the anxious looking youngster produced a long, silver-colored tube. After she had removed the cap at one end, the older teen saw with trepidation that it was a rather large and sharp-looking injection – one, apparently, with her name on it.

"_What?!_ Wh-why should I? And what exactly does that inoculator contain?" Motoko stammered, staring uneasily in the dim, flickering light at the sharp object in her younger namesake's right hand.

"I'm not sure, but I heard the others talking about it on our trip here," the young girl confessed. "But I think that they called it an 'anti-radiation shot', or something like that. I have already given myself one before I left to save you. _See?"_

Rolling up the left sleeve of her _kimono_, Little Motoko displayed a white cloth tourniquet on the inside bend of her elbow. "It hurt a little, but I didn't cry," she then declared, her fretfulness momentarily replaced by pride at her brave accomplishment.

"I…see. Very well," the kendo girl slowly agreed, eyeing the red spot of blood in the center of the bandage on the young girl's arm as she hesitantly reached forward to take the life-saving injection.

_This shot will no-doubt be painful, but that is far preferable to a slow death from radiation poisoning,_ Motoko consoled herself, shivering slightly as she rolled up her own sleeve. _And if this young girl can do it without any aid, then so can I…_

After Motoko had, with a wince, given herself the jab in her left arm, and then bandaged the aching spot, she began to ask her identically dressed young companion about her proposed plan. But then Motoko's voice trailed off into an uncomfortable silence as she abruptly realized something most unusual about the surprisingly calm behavior of the far younger girl.

_Huh? This girl – she has tears in her eyes, too, I see, and that is only to be expected after what we are suffering through. But she seems far less distraught than I am. Why? How can she possibly have this much self-control, even at such a young age…?_

_Well… since Motoko-chan has just claimed to me that she already knew that this tragedy was about to occur, I suppose that she was already prepared for the shock of it actually happening. That would explain her surprising lack of emotion. But, even so…?_

"Well, _Oneesama_, we could do one of two things," Little Motoko gravely told her still pale and ill-looking older namesake, cutting off the older teen's disturbing train of thought. "I came here from Pararakelse Island, in the Mid-Pacific Ocean, so we could try to make our way back there. But if we go to my home now, my father, Keitaro-san, will be much younger than he is now, and so will Su-san. And my brothers and sisters haven't even been born yet, and our lovely house will just be a bunch of damp old caves, so I don't really wanna do that, if we can help it."

"_Huh?!" _Motoko gasped. "Who-who did you just say that your father was?" _Surely she couldn't have just said-?!_

"Oh. My father is Keitaro Urashima-san." The tiny tot bowed to her, and then politely added, "I'm sorry, we haven't had time yet to be properly introduced. I am his second-youngest daughter, Motoko-chan. I am pleased to make your acquaintance at long last, Motoko-_Oneesama_."

"_Keitaro Urashima's daughter?!"_ Motoko yelled in disbelief, staring bug-eyed at the elementary-school-aged girl, still sure that she must have heard her wrong. "His _second-youngest_ daughter?! B-but, how? _When?_ And with who? S-Su - you said, Su, didn't you? But, that's impossible! She's only fifteen, and far too young to have had-!"

"Excuse me, _Oneesama_, but we came back from the future, remember?" Little Motoko reminded the babbling older teen. "I think that it was twenty-five years from now when we departed in our time machine to rescue you."

"_Twen-twenty-five years?!" _Motoko repeated, that familiar phrase jogging a faint memory in her chaotic mind. _Before, on the laundry platform, that's exactly how much older Urashima claimed to me he now was,_ she then realized with a shudder_. And he also told me that there was going to be an atomic explosion at the location of the Hinata Apartments…and after what has just transpired outside, that prediction of his has certainly came to pass…!_

_Could – could this girl's tale actually be the truth of what has happened here today, _she wondered, a chill racing up her back at the possibility_. Did the older Urashima really come back through time with the older Su and their daughter to save me and the other residents from that explosion? Normally I would laugh at such an implausible tale, but after what I have just witnessed, and with Su involved… She _is_ a genius, and an inventor…so it could be true!_

_And if Su really is Little Motoko-chan's mother, that would certainly explain her tanned skin color…_

"Anyway, I think that we should just wait here to be rescued by my family," the schoolgirl expounded to her shocked, teary-eyed, shivering companion. "See, _Oneesama,_ that way we will be taken back to the future, and everything will be the way that it was before for me. Except that you'll be there, alive, with us, too, like we planned. _Yay!"_

Motoko jumped at Little Motoko-chan's sudden exclamation of joy, the startled kendo girl more than a little taken aback at discovering that her young impersonator was so happy at the prospect of them both living together with her family in the future, that even under such dire circumstances as these, the young girl could actually manage a smile and a cheer.

_She-she actually means that!_ _How incredible is this, that I, of all people, could be so loved and treasured by a young girl that I have never even met before today. __And even though Motoko-chan is but an impressionable child, the very thought of such selfless concern for my well-being makes me feel…warm inside…_

"All – all right, Motoko-chan," the kendo girl finally answered, drying her tears as she forced her numbed mind to format a plan of action. "You are correct, we had best stay here, safe in this cave, for a day or two, at least," she decided. "And the interval will give the forest fire outside our cave time to die down, and also any radioactive airborne particles time to disperse. That will increase our chances of survival."

Motoko took a deep, uneasy breath of the smoky air, wondering as she did so if any radioactive fallout would succeed in penetrating their subterranean refuge - or if it already had. But even if it did, she reasoned, then the anti-radiation shots that she and Little Motoko had injected themselves with should serve to give them a good measure of immunity against its toxic effects.

Reassured in her own mind that they were now as safe as they could possibly hope to be, the kendo girl then continued outlining her own hastily thought up plan to the attentive tot.

"However, if nobody has arrived to rescue us by then, we shall have to move to a safer location, if for no other reason than to find uncontaminated food and water. After that, I think that we should carefully make our way down to Kyoto, to stay at our shrine with my clan. We will be safe there. Later on, I'll try to find a way to return you back to your home on Pararakelse Island, okay?"

_And if Urashima – Keitaro – really is there on Pararakelse Island,_ She then decided, her heart lifting with hope that her secret crush could have actually survived the horrifying blast that had just claimed their old home, and made it safely across the Pacific Ocean to that distant island paradise,_ Well then, whether he's fated to marry Su or not, I'll - I'll…confess to him h-how I truly feel about him, as I should have done weeks ago, and then beg Urashima's forgiveness for foolishly doubting his word. And then – maybe, just maybe – he can grow to love me, instead of Naru, or Su…?_

After a moments thought, Little Motoko nodded her head. "Yes, _Oneesama,"_ she agreed. "But my folks will be back to rescue us before we have to leave here, I betcha. They've got a time machine, you see. So, no matter how long it takes them back in 2027 to find a way to locate us, they can come right back to today, and rescue us in no time at all!"

Motoko managed a faint smile of her own at the young girl's optimistic confidence in the ability of her elders.

"…Fine," she agreed_._ "But until then, we'd best follow my plan."

_I hope that this child is correct with what she has just told me about the certainty of our impending rescue,_ Motoko uneasily thought, as she cuddled the much younger girl up close to her, both drawing comfort from the other's presence. _But if anyone can locate us way out here, Su is the one, all right… Especially if the older her and Urashima really _did_ travel back through time, as Motoko-chan claims. She must be in possession of some pretty advanced technology by now."_

_Gee, I hope that I'm right with what I've just told _Oneesama_,_ Little Motoko thought, feeling snug and safe in her idol's strong and comforting arms. _But if I really can't get back to my home in the future again, well, now that I'm finally with _Oneesama_, being stuck here with her wouldn't be so bad. In fact, being held by her feels so right…it's…almost like my mother is holding me…_

-:-:-:-:-:-

Two seconds after the rocket-propelled flying turtle and her passed out passenger had powered their way through the fast-closing mouth of the wormhole; the space-time doorway vanished out of the rapidly expanding nuclear fireball, and 2002 as well, as if it had never even been there. As it did so, the speeding Tama-chan breathed out a huge sigh of relief at the nearness of their last-second escape. That had been _too_ close!

And they weren't quite out of the woods yet, either! Quickly, the tiny hot springs turtle and her comatose friend spiralled down the zero-gravity tunnel in the wake of the shining silver time machine, managing to outrun, with the invaluable help of the miniature booster rocket built into her protective suit, the blast of heat that had made it through the entrance a split-second before it had slammed shut on their now destroyed former existence.

A moment later, the rocket finally cut out, having used up all of its limited supply of propellant. But the flying turtle wasn't worried on that score. The _onsen tamago_ knew that, with no gravity or friction to slow her and Mutsumi down, their current momentum alone would be easily enough to get them back to 2027.

Even the fact that the interior of the space-time wormhole was mostly devoid of air held no terrors for the tiny flyer. Being a turtle, Tama-chan could hold her breath for up to one hour at a time – twelve times longer than she would need to traverse the time-space shortcut and come out safely on the other side.

Tama-chan was more concerned about Mutsumi's welfare in the airless environment that they were now hurtling through. The turtle girl couldn't hold her breath for a tenth as long as her tiny rescuer. But the worried turtle soon realized that since the young woman was now in a deep coma, the fact that she was should save her from any danger of asphyxiation. Tama-chan knew from her previous similar experiences with Mutsumi's fainting spells, that while the girl was in her catatonic state, which resembled nothing so much as a form of hibernation, all of the functions of Mutsumi's shapely body - her breathing, her heartbeat, and even her brain activity - slowed right down to a tiny fraction of their normal rate. Consequentially, Mutsumi now needed far less oxygen to stay alive, and so the five-minute trip forwards in time to 2027 through the airless vacuum of the space-time shortcut should prove to be no threat to her continued survival at all.

After assuring herself of this vital fact, Tama-chan then took a moment to give the drifting Mutsumi her anti-radiation injection. After doing so, she glided onto her friend's head and settled down comfortably for their short trip back to the future.

The tiny turtle knew that they would have to make it back to 2027 by their own efforts, this time. There was no way that she could overtake Su's time machine, so it would be pointless to try. Nor could she contact her friends aboard the disk-shaped dot blurring along ahead of her, because the short range transmitter built into her radiation suit had been shorted out by the electromagnetic pulse that had accompanied the abruptly cut off flash of energy through the wormhole entrance before it had closed. Bearing all of this in mind, Tama-chan wisely figured that it would be best to just sit back and enjoy the ride, conserve her own energy, and brace herself for their arrival through the 2027 end of the wormhole, which would take place in the atmosphere exactly one kilometer up above Pararakelse Island.

Still, Tama-chan hoped that she didn't fall too far behind her oblivious fellow rescuers. She, after all, had no idea whether Su would close the Pararakelse Island opening of the wormhole as soon as the time machine had made it through that end, or not. And Tama-chan sure didn't want her and Mutsumi to be trapped in the time flow with no way out, to suffocate, and then drift along in the black nothingness for possibly the rest of eternity, either!

Fortunately, a little forethought on her part would prevent any possibility of such a grim ending. Remembering the small locator beacon that Su had built into her rescue suit for just such a contingency, Tama-chan quickly activated it. The sensors on the speeding time machine far ahead of them would pick up its pulsating signal and enlighten their no-doubt overjoyed friends that the two latecomers had made it out of the fiery jaws of certain death, after all.

-:-:-:-:-:-

On the hurtling time machine far ahead of the intrepid flying turtle and her swooned lady companion, neither Su nor Keitaro knew about any of this, of course. But both were praying with all of their might that the tiny turtle and Keitaro's oldest and dearest friend had made it safely into the wormhole before the reactor had exploded. It must have been touch-and-go, no matter what the outcome had been, and both rescuers were fretting badly over not knowing the fate of their dear friends.

"I feel terrible," Keitaro was at that very moment telling Su, his hands over his face as he slumped dejectedly forward in his seat. "I can't believe that after all we've gone through, we're only managing to bring Naru and Kuro back with us! And in doing so, there's a good chance that we've lost Tama-chan in the process! _God-dammit!!_ Are you _absolutely sure_ that you can't pick up any signal from her locator beacon, Su?"

"Not yet," the Molmol woman unhappily told her frustrated partner. Then, in an effort to cheer them both up, she added, "But you gotta remember, Keitaro, that _doesn't_ mean they didn't make it. And here's why. When my nuclear reactor went '_kablooie'_, the electromagnetic pulse it caused managed to enter the wormhole a split-second before it had fully closed. I wasn't expecting us to have to stay on location for so long and cut it so fine with our escape, so the pulse succeeded in hitting my time machine before I could bring up our rear shields. Unfortunately, the pulse scrambled the rear facing scanners on our time machine, so I can't see what's behind us."

At the worried look on her companion's face, Su flashed him a cautiously optimistic grin. "Chill, Kei-Baby, it didn't do any permanent damage to my ship. It'll just take me a couple more minutes to bring the shorted-out sensors back online. And once that happens, we'll know for sure whether Tama-chan and Mutsumi managed to escape into the wormhole in time, or not."

"Okay, fine," Keitaro said, breathing out a sigh of relief at finding out their transport hadn't been seriously damaged, mixed with tense resignation at having to wait to find out the fate of their two tardy friends. "But the suspense of not knowing that is killing me. Geez! I'm trying hard to be positive about Tama-chan and Mutsumi's chances here, but I've also got to somehow try to prepare myself for the worst just in case they _didn't_ make it, you know. My nerves are totally shot."

"Well, I'm betting that they did," Kaolla declared, determined to remain optimistic, even if her partner couldn't. "Tama-chan's radiation suit had a small rocket built into it, so if she remembered to use it, her and Turtle Lady will both be just fine."

"God, I hope you're right, Su. But what about the other residents that we failed to save? We know for sure that they got left behind," Keitaro despondently pointed out, rubbing tiredly at his face with his fingers, seemingly determined at this juncture not to be cheered up by anyone or anything. "I know that Motoko got grabbed by one of your rescue pods, so there's a good chance that she at least could have made it to safety, but what in the heck happened to Shinobu, Kanako and Kitsune?! I'll never be able to rest easy until I know for sure that they survived, too."

"Good point, Kei-Baby! I'd best check that out right now, while I've got the time."

As the fretting Keitaro watched, the now no-less anxious Su brought up the telemetry for her eight rescue pods onto the heads-up display screen in front of them. Then, to his elation, he saw the Molmol woman's face turn from apprehension to rapidly growing joy as she skimmed through the data.

"Lookies! According to the data we received before we made our jump, pods one, three and four had success," she informed him, newfound hope in her voice for their missing friends. "According to these readings, Pod One grabbed Motoko; Pod Three got Kanako and Pod Four, Kitsune. Then all three pods hauled ass up the big hill immediately behind the apartments, over the ridge, and down towards the safe locations I had plotted for them. My rescue pods worked just as well as I had hoped they would, thank goodness!"

"So – so you think that they all survived, then?!" Keitaro inquired, his tone almost pleading. "But you've got nothing on Shinobu? Nothing at all?!"

"Nix on her, sorry. And as for my buddy, Motoko, and Kitsune, well, I'm…still not sure," Su admitted, her spirits sinking somewhat again as she noticed the incomplete data from two of the pods. "Well, not one hundred percent, anyway. I'm positive that Kanako did make it – I got a signal back from her pod that her zero-time field had been activated. But the nuclear reactor blew while Kitsune's pod was still in flight – and the data being streamed from Motoko's pod suddenly cut out in mid-air, just behind the ridge, even _before_ the reactor explosion had even happened. As to why her pod stopped transmitting so suddenly, your guess is as good as mine."

"Could – _um_ – could Motoko's rescue pod have accidentally hit a tree and crashed?" the alarmed ex-_ronin_ inquired, feeling a surge of worry speed up his already hammering heart at Su's disturbing words. "Or maybe the data uplink on her pod just malfunctioned and lost contact with the time machine? Could that be it?"

"I dunno, Kei-Baby. Either scenario's equally likely at this point."

"But all three girls _were_ behind the hill when the atomic blast went off?" Keitaro anxiously persisted, grasping at any straw that would help him to believe that his long lost friends could still somehow be alive. "So they had the summit between them and the fireball, right?"

"_Um_, Kanako and Motoko were, yes," Su confirmed, looking thoughtfully sideways at the almost painfully hopeful expression on his face. "Kitsune's pod was just about to cross the ridgeline at the time of detonation, but my computer lost the uplink to her pod when we entered the wormhole, so…I can't say for sure whether it was caught in the explosion, or not. Sorry."

"Oh, crap! But if Kit's pod was hit by the blast, could it have survived the electromagnetic pulse and the shockwave, and then made it to safety…?"

"Well, the old map of the area that I planned our rescue mission with said that it is about one-and-a-half kilometers from where the Hinata Apartments used to stand, to the top of the hill that backed them. Over that distance, and with the pod only seconds away from crossing the top of the hill at the time of the explosion, I'd have to say 'yes' as the answer to your question, Kei-Baby. The rescue pods are made of the same reflective metal as our time machine, so they're fully shielded against electromagnetic radiation, as well as being very heat-resistant. Besides, the pods were programmed to dip straight down and hug the reverse slope once they had crossed the ridgeline. So, like with Motoko and Kanako, the hill itself would have shielded Kitsune and her pod from the worst effects of the aftermath."

"Yeah, that's what I was hoping, as well," Keitaro sighed out, closing his eyes as he slumped back down into his padded reclining seat, rubbing at his forehead again. "Good! At least I know now that Kanako's safe, and that there's a very good possibility that Kitsune and Motoko are, too. And even if we aren't bringing them back home with us right now, as we had hoped, that's _definitely_ something to be grateful for, isn't it?"

"Yup! Oh, yeah, before I forget, now that we've proved that my time machine does work, we should be able to take another trip backwards to search for our friends again in maybe a week or so," Su smugly declared, to her partner's astonishment and delight. "I now have the exact spatial calculations and four dimensional co-ordinates we need to make another time jump back to 2002. Even better, they are precise enough for me to narrow down our time of arrival to a day or so after the worst of the effects of the nuclear explosion have dissipated. That's why I left our end of the wormhole back in 2002, instead of bringing it back to Pararakelse Island with us."

"What? _We can? That's great!"_

"Ya think?! _Nyahahaha!_ I thought that you'd be pleased to hear that juicy little titbit of info, Kei-Baby. This ain't over yet!"

Su then explained to the overjoyed Keitaro why she hadn't used the zero-time field projected by their time machine to slow down the runaway nuclear chain reaction inside her sabotaged reactor when they had first arrived back at the apartments. The reason for not utilizing it was actually pretty straightforward. Had the zero-time field been switched on upon their arrival in Su's burning jungle room, no one, including Tama-chan, would have been able to exit their ship without being instantly frozen in time. Nor could the exterior-mounted rescue pods have been launched. Their attempted rescue of their friends would have been over before it had even begun.

"And quite apart from that reason, Kei-Baby, both of us were needed to search for the others," Kaolla pointed out to him. "The Hinata Apartments building was far too large for only one person to do it, even with the extra couple of minutes we could have gained if I had stayed behind at the controls and switched on the zero-time field after you and Tama-chan had made it safely out of its range."

"I see… I understand now, Su. But even so, with all of the planning and preparation that we did for this rescue mission, we should have been able to do a better job of it! Granted, we managed get Naru and Kuro on board with us, Kanako is safe, and we're pretty sure that Kitsune and Motoko are too. But I just wish I knew right now what happened to Shinobu, Tama-chan and Mutsumi!"

"I'm really worried about Shinobu, too, Kei-Baby. But since neither you nor I could find her there, and she left the others a note, I think that maybe she went out for the day," Su speculated, hope on her tanned face as her fingers danced across her keypad. " And, as for the other two, we'll know that in only a couple of minutes. I'm re-routing power around the burnt out cables right now. And the automatic diagnostic and self-repair system for the sensor system is about half-done… Hey! Have you gotten Naru up off the floor back there, and buckled her in yet?"

"Oh, shoot! I'd best get my ass into gear and see to her right now," Keitaro exclaimed, his hands now working to unclip his seat buckles once again. "Naru should be waking up pretty soon, so I want her to be securely strapped into one of the passenger seats before she does, or else she's liable to hand me my head for tasering her before I can even start to explain why I did what I did."

"Oh, yeah, about Naru," Su spoke up, figuring that she had best let her partner in on a little something that she had done to his ex-idol. "When I first got back to the time machine, on my way in I gave her a quick shot of tranquillizer. So don't expect much of a response from her until well after we get back home, Kei-Baby."

"_What?!_ Why on earth did you do that, Su?" Keitaro yelped, freezing half out of his seat, a strange mixture of alarm and confusion warring on his face. Maybe that was because he wasn't sure in his own mind just yet whether to be relieved or not that the girl he had loved would be out for a considerable while longer. Even though a quarter century had passed by since he had been the unwilling recipient of her anger, he still vividly remembered what her right cross to his jaw had felt like. And Keitaro was in no hurry to experience that sensation again any time soon – especially since he was sure that upon her awakening, Naru would remember him tasering her. He was equally positive that, at their next meeting, her instinctive reaction to that shocking experience at his guilty hands would in all probability be both swift and exceedingly violent.

"Well, I didn't want her to recover from your taser too soon, and get in the way of our rescue attempts – which you and I _both_ know she would have done," Su sheepishly explained. "She'll be out for at least another hour, so you can breathe easy for a while yet. You'll be getting your lumps _after_ we land. _Nyahahaha!"_

"Oh...yeah, I see your point," Keitaro remarked, managing a faint smile of his own. "But I'd best strap Naru in all the same, just in case there's any unexpected air turbulence once we exit the wormhole above our oasis."

"Okies. I'll keep working on the sensors."

As the understandably nervous Keitaro cautiously and very gently scooped up from the floor the limp form of his long-lost dream girl, and transferred her onto one of the comfortable seats built into the left wall of the passenger compartment, Su industriously twiddled around with her controls, trying to speed up the pace of their repairs. A minute or so later, a loud _'beep'_ and a flashing green light on her instrument panel signalled to her the success of her endeavors.

"Okey-doo, our rear sensors are booting up again, Keitaro," his attractive pilot called back to him, as he struggled to do up Naru's restraints. "I'm not getting any visuals from the rear cameras yet, but the microwave radar tracking system has just come back on line - hey, I think I just got a ping? Yep, there it is - a good, steady reading. And I'm now picking up the locator beacon signal too! Something's following us up the wormhole, and I betcha I know just who it is! _Yaay! Tama-chan and Turtle Girl made it, Kei-Baby, they made it!"_

"_They did? Oh, thank god!"_ Keitaro yelled, palpable relief on his now overjoyed face as he dashed back towards his seat, having just that moment finished buckling the limp and drooling Naru _very_ securely into her own one. "But are you absolutely sure about-?"

"Yep, again! We've got visual back now, too, and at full magnification, I can even see them on screen. Right there, Kei-Baby! _See?"_

As his eager eyes gazed upon the distant and fuzzy black silhouette of Mutsumi, her hands on her antennaed head, doing a gentle, slow motion spin in their wake down the rotating purplish vortex of the space-time wormhole, Keitaro suddenly felt as if the weight of the entire world had just lifted off his shoulders.

"Wow! You're right! _'Whew!'_ Quite apart from Mutsumi, the kids would have killed me if Tama-chan had been lost-"

"Hold it! You'd best strap yourself back in and get ready for a jolt or two. We're coming up on the Pararakelse Island end of the wormhole right now," Su interrupted him, a grin on her face and contentment in her voice at them being now only moments away from successfully completing their dangerous mission and making it back home in one piece – albeit, without as many of their friends as she had hoped they would retrieve. Still, thanks to her, Keitaro and Tama-chan, with the tiny turtle and Mutsumi's miraculous appearance in the wormhole to their rear, it now looked like most, if not all, of the Hinata Apartment residents had at least managed to survive Doomsday. So, even though Shinobu, Kanako, Motoko and Kitsune were still back in 2002, Su was intensely grateful for that small mercy, at least.

"What, already?" the astonished Keitaro queried his pilot, as he hurriedly followed her sound advice with regards to his seating. "But it's only been a few minutes since we left 2002…!"

"Yup, but since we're travelling back home through my captive wormhole, we avoid the Negative Universe entirely on our return trip to 2027, remember?" Kaolla chuckled. "In the Negative Universe, we had to travel for almost half an hour at nearly the speed of light – complete with its time-dilation effect on us - to get back to 2002. This wormhole is a shortcut that bypasses both normal and negative space-time directly back to our starting point above Pararakelse Island. Since it's only going to take us about five minutes to return to 2027, it may seem to us that we're actually moving far faster than the speed of light at the moment, but we're not. In fact, our cruising speed now is only…" Su consulted her speedometer, "…One hundred kilometers an hour."

"Um, draw me a diagram after we land, will you?" Keitaro finally answered, feeling his head begin to ache again as he reflected on the complexities of what Su had just told him. "Sorry, Su, I'm just too happy that Tama-chan and Mutsumi have survived to be able to pay proper attention to one of your physics lectures right now."

"Will do, Boss. Anyway, hang onto your hat," Su warned him, staring with satisfaction at the rapidly growing point of light on their front screen. "We'll be exiting the wormhole into 2027 in ten seconds. And I'm sure that there'll be a lot of people waiting down there in our home who'll be really glad to see us again!"

-:-:-:-:-:-

The Location: Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan.

The Date: 2002, Doomsday, one second after the reactor detonation.

Keitaro and Su no doubt would have both breathed out giant-sized sighs of relief had they known for sure that their suspicions about Shinobu being absent from the Hinata Apartments at the time of the disaster had actually hit the nail right on its head. Their dear friend hadn't been at the doomed locality the time of its total obliteration, after all.

And as to why Shinobu wasn't at the apartments at the time, there was a simple explanation. On that fateful morning back in 2002, after the younger Keitaro had left for town, and the fifteen-year-old Su had retired to her lab, the little blue-haired cook had received a surprise and most welcome visit from her mother. And after greeting her delighted daughter, in an incredibly well timed and fortuitous stroke of luck for the overjoyed girl's continued survival, Mrs. Maehara had then invited her shy little teen out for an afternoon's shopping with her in Yokohama.

Shinobu had eagerly accepted her mother's offer, the thrilled girl having already washed and hung out the laundry, her sole task for the day. And since it was Naru's turn to prepare the midday meal for the other boarders, she really didn't have anything to hold her back from taking some time off to enjoy herself. So, after leaving a note on the kitchen door to inform her friends that she wouldn't be back until later on that night, the excited teen and her mother had left the premises. After a quick stop off at the Hinata Tea Rooms for a cup of tea, it was off to the railway station for the happy pair.

The mother and daughter combo had boarded their train to Yokohama with plenty of time to spare. The E21 Series Electric Multiple Unit train, resplendent in its _Shōnan_ color scheme of orange and green bodyside stripes, had departed Hinata City at 11:00 am, right on schedule – and, crucially, a full hour before the secretly pre-planned nuclear disaster was scheduled to occur in the now receding metropolitan area behind it.

Following the JR Tokaido Main Line, the train had arrived at Platform Five at Yokohama Station, in the center of the huge, sprawling city, well before lunchtime. Once there, the pair had disembarked from the train and headed for the station's bus stop, intending to go by bus to the shopping and dining area of Minato Mirai, for first a meal, and then an extensive and no-doubt highly enjoyable and expensive shop-fest!

Because of the extensive crowd in transit both to and from Yokohama Station, Shinobu and her mother had a ten-minute wait before they could board their bus. So to pass the time, they purchased two plastic bottles of hot tea from a vending machine, and then strolled out into an open area to enjoy the glorious, late summer day.

Just as they were finishing off their hot drinks, a bright flash of light, low down in the southwestern sky, abruptly attracted the attention of the Maehara ladies. The pulse of radiance was dazzling in intensity, almost as if the sun itself had momentarily twinkled into existence at a location further down the coastline of Sagami Bay.

A second or two later, the solid pavement under their feet unexpectedly lurched from a passing earth tremor. At the same time, in the blue and largely cloudless skies high above the city, _something_ rippled past in a huge, barely visible and ever-expanding arc away from the epicentre of the glow on the distant horizon.

And as the powerful shockwave swept through their ephemeral forms, the drifting clouds actually _jolted _from the force of its passing_._ Several were shredded entirely, blown outwards in dissipating veils of mist.

"Oh my goodness! What on earth was that?" the bluenette's mother mused out loud, an uneasy feeling gripping her at the unnerving sight. "It's given me spots on my eyes! And just look at that brilliant glow shining on the horizon where it happened."

"I s-saw it, too," Shinobu nervously replied, her wide, dark blue eyes riveted on the expanding corona of white light. "I wonder what is causing such a bright light?"

"I have no idea, Shinobu," Mrs. Maehara admitted. "But whatever it is, it seems to be located somewhere back down the coast in the direction that we arrived from, maybe even near Hinata City…"

Then they both suddenly squinted and flinched as an eye-wateringly luminous cloud of vast proportions slowly rose up above the line of rooftops – a boiling, rolling bubble of fire that resembled nothing so much as a smoke-wreathed mushroom of white-hot lava. As the cityscape brightened around them, the surprised mother and daughter felt their bare faces and arms suddenly warm up from the all-enveloping wave of radiant heat flooding down upon Kanagawa Prefecture from the incandescent mushroom cloud.

Almost as one, the surrounding crowd of awestruck pedestrians froze into place, worried chatter arising from amongst the startled knots of people as they speculated on the cause of the phemonenon they were now witnessing. Before the mushroom cloud had billowed up into full view, not many of the shocked and disbelieving people had even a clue as to what had just happened down to the southwest. But now, more than a few of them jumped to the correct conclusion, and they were now losing no time in telling their fellow citizens just what the cause of it had to be.

As the shocking news spread like wildfire through the crowd, a chorus of panicky shouts and screams began to arise from the groups of commuters surrounding Shinobu and her mother, and frightened people began to rush off in all directions. Adding to the rapidly building chaos, a moment later the city's civil defence sirens began to wail, the spine-chilling sound rapidly gaining in both pitch and intensity as the warning devices wound up to their full volume.

"Mother! What's going on?" Shinobu cried out, clutching at her parent's arm. "Why is everybody running away?! Was that a bomb going off?"

"I don't know, dear. But whatever it is, it's bad-!"

Next second, a breaking news report caught the eye of the alarmed pair. On a huge billboard-sized TV screen on a nearby building, the pixelly image of a surprised looking newsreader could be seen receiving a single sheet of paper – or rather it had been urgently thrust in front of him. The well-dressed man glanced down at the words written on the memo, he did a double take, and his face lost most of its color as he reread the frightening message, just to make doubly sure that he wasn't seeing things.

The startled professional then made a visible but not entirely successful attempt to compose himself, before turning his shaky, sweaty gaze back towards the patiently waiting camera.

'_Ladies and gentlemen, I…I have just received word that an _atomic explosion_ has just occurred further south in Kanagawa Prefecture. M-more details as they come to hand…!'_

Then the shocked newsreader turned his pale face away from the camera lens once again, to speak in a low, urgent tone to someone just out of picture – unfortunately, in the heat of the moment, without turning his microphone off first.

'_Holy shit, Nakada-san, is this report really true? The bloody government hasn't changed 'April Fools Day' to today without my knowledge, have they? Or is this some goddamn prank you're playing on me to make me look stupid in front of our viewers, just because I slept with Midori-chan in reception before you even got to ask her out, you asshole?'_

'_Craaap! Turn the fucking microphone off if you wanna rub it in to me about my lack of a love life, _the hidden person hissed in an outraged whisper back to the glowering, suspicious-looking newsreader. _'You're still on the bloody air, Shiraishi, you imbecile! And, yes, Shit-for-Brains,_ _whether you want to believe it or not,_ _our sources are telling us that a fucking atomic bomb really _did_ go off down south a couple of minutes ago! Just read the god-damned teleprompter when it comes up, and shut the hell up with your gloating about you humping Midori-chan, or I'll kick your fucking-!'_

Right then, the audio cut out and the screen simultaneously went blank. A moment later, a picture of a burning cartoon rat, its eyes smoking and with its bared teeth wedged into a frayed electrical cable, appeared on the screen. Above the fried rodent were the words, 'Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.'

As this happened, the sweat-dropping Shinobu and her equally stunned mother turned their gob-smacked faces to stare with open-mouthed bewilderment at each other. But before anything could be said, their attention was grabbed by a second big screen on another nearby building, this one showing the rather staticky image of a different newsreader from a rival network.

'…_According to reports just now flooding in from various surviving aircraft and helicopters, the epicentre of the nuclear explosion seems to have been centered either in, or just above, the township of Hinata Hot Springs. Hinata City itself has suffered severe damage, and many areas are well ablaze. There are now gale-force winds feeding the firestorm, and all aircraft are being warned to flee the area immediately. Oh my god, this looks bad, people…_

_Attention! Here is a local civil defence warning! Because of the danger of radioactive fallout, all citizens in the Yokohama area are advised to seek shelter without delay! Please seek the nearest shelter, and remain indoors until further notice!'_

As if to emphasize that this life-altering event was really, truly occurring, a deep, rolling boom, like that of distant thunder, came faintly over the sound of the traffic and sirens to the disbelieving ears of the citizens of Yokohama. The reverberation of the atomic detonation had finally reached the city, providing the final, grim confirmation of the unspeakable tragedy that was even now claiming the lives of countless thousands of inhabitants further south along Sagami Bay.

"It…it happened at Hin-Hinata Hot Springs…?" Shinobu stuttered through her suddenly pale and trembling lips, that familiar name grabbing her attention away from the chaos now surrounding her. A second later, the full realization of what must have just happened to her home and her friends hit the teen like a bucket of icy water, freezing her slender body to its core despite the heat from the towering nuclear funeral pyre still beating at her exposed areas of skin.

"Oh my god…?! _Oh my god!! Sempai!! Sempai!! Everybody, please don't die?! Don't leave me all alone…?!"_

Then, as a rising breeze began to blow towards the conflagration in the south, the entire streetscape seemed to spin in slow motion around the frantically screaming schoolgirl. Shinobu's shocked, grief-stricken mind was rapidly being overcome by the frightful knowledge that her dear friends were now almost certainly all dead, and that she would never, ever see them again.

It was too much for the distraught young woman to bear. Shinobu felt faint; her whole body seemed to be detached from her numbed, drifting mind and her legs could no longer support her weight. She slumped limply forward, the pavement rushed up to meet the swooning teen, and soothing darkness engulfed her.

-:-:-:-:-:-

_Next Chapter: The startling conclusion! (Or will it be? The end, I mean.) All is revealed to Naru. And with Naru now alive, Keitaro has a hard choice to make. Just what is he going to do, now that his promise girl is back in his life?_

_Stay tuned!_


	9. Chapter 9

_Heyo, and welcome to this special, extended length chapter of 'Love Hina: Doomsday'. I thought about splitting it into two chapters, but I think that it is best read as one. Besides, I didn't want to spoil any surprises._

_Okay, on with the show!_

-:-:-:-:-:-

**LOVE HINA: DOOMSDAY  
**_**CHAPTER NINE**_

By Doctor-T

-:-:-:-:-:-

The Location: The hidden oasis, Pararakelse Island.

The Date: 2027, the afternoon of the rescue mission, just before the time machine's return.

One kilometer below the slowly rotating mouth of the space-time wormhole, beside the freshwater lake at the center of the hidden oasis, a trio of Keitaro's small horde of sun tanned children was at that moment busily engaged in an increasingly more anxious search for the still missing Little Motoko. To this end, Little Shinobu, being the youngest, had been sent to do the safest part of the mission, a thorough search of their expansive, mesa home. The other three had set out to circumvent the lake, after first donning wide sunhats to protect themselves from the fierce rays of the mid-afternoon desert sun. They had a strong suspicion that their missing sister had slunk off to do some of her mysterious training at some secluded spot in the oasis again, without bothering to inform them of her plans, as she was wont to do from time to time.

Even though they were all sure that Little Motoko wouldn't be in any danger from the wandering herds of Pararakelse Island giant tortoises that roamed the area, there were always the desert cobras that lived under the shifting sands to worry about. While the snakes were not commonly found in the vicinity of their oasis, and any other species of dangerous wildlife were also very few and far between at their remote location near the center of the vast Desert of Death, Masayuki in particular thought that it would be best for them to not take any chances concerning the tiny _Shinmei-ryū_ trainee's welfare.

The three had set out full of optimism, but by now, young Masayuki was becoming increasingly more and more frustrated by their inability to locate their errant sibling. Little Motoko hadn't been at either of her usual two nearest training places, and the third site she sometimes hiked off to train at was at least half a kilometer away from their present position, on the far side of the lake. And it wasn't helping his mood any that the twins, Naru and Kimiaki, seemed to be more interested in chasing each other around in the warm, shallow lake water than with helping him to search for their younger sister along the way.

"Hey, c'mon you two," young Masayuki urged the splashing, hollering pair from his position beneath the overhanging coconut palms, pointing off towards their destination, which was still a fair way away around the gentle curve of the sandy beach that they were moving along. "We still have to check out the cave in the rocky valley over there! You guys can play afterwards!"

"Aww, but we wanna go for a swim first," Little Naru protested, kicking a spray of lake water in his direction with her tiny right foot. "And Kimiaki-kun needs to hit the can again, too. Look, you can tell by the way that he's holding himself again!"

"No, I don't!" her two-minutes-younger brother instantly rebuked his tongue-poking sister, an outraged look appearing on his face at her embarrassing indiscretion as he snatched his hand away from the front of his pants. "Shut up, Naru, you blabbermouth!"

"_Do too,"_ Naru shot back, splashing him as well. "I heard you say so, just then. You said you wanted to go behind that bush over there and pee-!"

"_Did not!"_

"_Did too!"_

As the quarrelsome pair argued, Masayuki raised his eyes upwards in search of inspiration; just in time to notice, just below the wide brim of his sunhat, the exhilarating sight of the returning time machine flying through the open mouth of the translucent purple whirlpool floating serenely high above them and out into the endless blue expanse overhead.

"_They're back, they're back!"_ the excited boy yelled out to his younger brother and sister, over the just now arriving, combined thunder of the time machine's manoeuvring jets. He waved frantically at the rapidly descending disk of silver, the bright tropical sunlight sparkling off its reflective outer surface in a blaze of molten gold. "Gee, I wonder who they managed to save?!"

"_Yaaay!"_ Little Naru cheered, releasing the corners of her now just-as-excited twin brother's mouth, their disagreement instantly ancient history. Then the rowdy girl grabbed his right arm and turned to dash off through the shallow water back towards their stone tower home. "Let's go see them right now, Kimiaki-kun!"

"Yeah! Race you there-!" Kimiaki began to say, simultaneously dropping his own hands from his aborted vigorous attempt to deform his sister's face. Quite apart from his eagerness to meet and greet the returning heroes, the boy was also relishing the chance to beat his sister in a footrace on their way to do it.

"_Hold on, you two,"_ Masayuki hollered in consternation at the departing pair. He, too, desperately wanted to run back to the landing bay and see just whom his time travelling seniors had managed to rescue from 2002, but right now they had a far more important matter to attend to.

"We can't go home until we've found Motoko-chan, remember?" the nine-year-old chastised the now sulking, foot-shuffling twins, his yell having brought both errant younger siblings to a reluctant halt. "Dad's sure to blame _us_ for not looking after her if she's got herself hurt or lost! So, _come on_, or I'll tell Dad that you two couldn't be bothered to help me find her. And then you'll _really_ be in for it!"

So, after one last, longing look back at the distant time machine, which was even now manoeuvring, by way of its jet thrusters, down into its hilltop hanger, the three frustrated and annoyed children continued reluctantly on their way.

"Geez, I wish Tama-chan was here," Kimiaki grumbled, his head hanging and feet dragging as he biffed a stone out into the gently rippling lake. "She could have checked out that dumb old valley in only a couple of minutes, instead of us having to go all of the way over there! And I betcha she would have found stupid Motoko-chan for us, by now, too."

"Or she coulda flown one of us over there for a look, and then back again," Little Naru pointed out with a toss of her long, silky hair. "And since I'm the lightest, I woulda been the one she would've taken with her, too."

"_Would not,"_ Kimiaki argued, fixing his twin sister with a smug look. "Tama-chan would've chosen me, because I'm the strongest, fastest and best looking!"

"_Not even,"_ Naru smirked, pulling down the corner of her right eye with a finger and sticking out her tongue at him. _"Nyaaah!_ You would have needed too many toilet stops!"

"No, I wouldn't!" Kimiaki wailed. "Say that again, Naru, and I'll dunk you in the lake!"

"Oh, yeah?!" Little Naru shot back, having a similar temperament to her older namesake when provoked. "Bring it on, widdly-boy!"

"Cut it out, both of you," Masayuki firmly declared, stepping between the fired up pair. "Tama-chan isn't even here! And if you'd told me before we left that you both wanted to ride around our lake to look for Motoko-chan, we could have brought Gidg-"

"_Wheeeee!"_

The sudden, faint at first, but now increasingly loud cry of half-enjoyment, half-fear coming from high above them caused all three kids to jump with surprise. Instantly, three sets of wide eyes gawked skyward as they tried to discover the source of the rapidly approaching voice.

Then a large column of water fountained up from near the center of the lake, and a second later, the loud splash of the watery impact reached their keen ears.

"Wow! I think whoever that was, fell out of that purple hole above us," Kimiaki exclaimed, running back down to the waters edge, Naru hot on his heels. "It's just as well that person hit the water!"

"I think so, too," Little Naru added, jumping up and down on the hot sand again as she attempted to see any sign of movement near the circle of wavelets now expanding out from the impact site. "Oh, please can I swim out to take a look, Masayuki-kun? _Can I, can I?!"_

"No, we'd best run back home, grab the boat we left back below the house and get out there," the excited Masayuki commanded his awestruck younger siblings, all thoughts of finding Little Motoko now momentarily forgotten by him, as well. "I wanna see if whoever that was survived that fall!"

"Yeah!" Kimiaki agreed, no less excited than his older brother. But then his eyes nearly bugged out of his head, and he began to jump up and down like his twin sister, whilst pointing frantically out over the lake in the direction of the impact. _"He-hey, look!_ Someone's flying towards us just above the surface of the water!"

"What? _No-way!"_ Masayuki and Little Naru chorused, their own eyes now almost out on stalks at what they were seeing.

The mystery figure of their most unexpected visitor swiftly drew near to their position on the yellow sand beach, and the three squinting children could at last get a good look at who it was approaching them.

"Hey, it's a lady, and…_Tama-chan!"_ Little Naru whooped, having just then spotted the tiny turtle flying along just above their dripping wet visitor, who was hanging on by her hands below the exhausted looking pet, some two meters above the surface of the lake. Unable to contain her excitement a minute longer, the young girl began to dance around with joy at the return of their tiny companion.

"_Yaaay!!_ Tama-chan's back! Now she can take me for a ride around the lake!"

"No, she can take _me_ for a ride," the overly competitive Kimiaki began to argue, only to be quickly cut off by his older brother again.

"_Shhhh, you guys!_ Is that any way to greet a guest?" Masayuki rebuked the pair. "She looks like she's from Japan, too, so show her some manners, will you?!"

A moment later, the puffing turtle finally arrived at the beach, first slowing down into a hover, and then lowering her confused but excited looking passenger gently down feet-first onto the hot sand in front of them. Her duty done, Tama-chan let out a loud, "Myuh!" of welcome to her young playmates, and a gasp of relief, then belly-flopped down onto the newcomer's antennaed head. There the worn out _onsen tamago_ lay, panting for air from her strenuous exertions, her tiny tongue hanging out of her mouth and her chest heaving, courtesy of trying to control the much larger Mutsumi's overly rapid rate of descent from exactly one kilometer up.

All three children then quickly formed a line, bowed politely to their surprise, drop-in visitor, and chorused in a monotone, "_Konnichi-wa!_ Welcome to our home!"

"_Oh, my,"_ the dizzy looking young woman exclaimed, peering down with surprise at her miniature welcoming party. "_Konnichi-wa_, to all of you, too."

Then Mutsumi just stood there, blinking in the bright sunlight, and looking as if she had just woken up from a long sleep – which in a sense, she had.

The turtle girl had finally come to from her fainting spell just as they both drifted out of the wormhole mouth into the cool and thin, high altitude air at one thousand meters above the Desert of Death. With the sudden return of gravity, the pair had instantly dropped like stones, notwithstanding Tama-chan's frantic beating of her flippers in the nebulous atmosphere, in a futile attempt to slow their free-fall. Luckily, as the warming air thickened as they reached a lower altitude, the flying turtle began to have a little more success with slowing their rapid rate of descent.

Despite this, Tama-chan and Mutsumi must still have been falling at more than thirty kilometers an hour upon their splashdown in the warm waters of the sand bottomed lake. In a stroke of good fortune, the crystal clear fresh water was about three meters deep where they hit, a sufficient depth to break their fall without injury.

Once the pair had resurfaced, Tama-chan took a moment to recover her breath and to get a measure of her strength back. Then she lifted off again, hauling the dazed Mutsumi back up out of the water and off towards the knot of children that she had spotted on the closest section of sweeping, palm fringed, yellow sand shoreline.

"Hey, I recognize you, lady," Masayuki declared in Japanese, amazement on his face and in his tone as his memory clicked as to just where he had seen pictures of the twin-antennaed young woman before. "You're Mutsumi Otohime-san, aren't you?"

"_Woww!_ I know you, too," Little Naru gasped out in huge-eyed astonishment, also in Japanese, also having just then remembered the photos that she had previously seen of the turtle girl on the wall in the Memorial Room in their huge, rock walled house. "_Look, look_, Kimiaki-kun, it _is_ her! _Yaaay!_ This is great!"

"Oh my goodness! Yes, I am. But how do you children know who I am?" the dripping wet Mutsumi asked in amazement, abruptly coming to from her momentary daze at the mention of her name. She then smiled warmly down at the half-circle of tanned faces staring excitedly up at her as she wrung out her hair braid. "My, oh, my, aren't you all so cute?! _Um_…just who are you all, anyway, if you don't mind me asking? And where am I, exactly?"

Upon being told by Masayuki the name of the new and most unexpected location that she had been transported to, Mutsumi scratched at the back of her dripping wet head as she looked around with surprise at her sun-drenched tropical surroundings.

"I'm at the oasis on Pararakelse Island?" she repeated to no one in particular. "How on earth did I get here?"

After staring in wonderment at the huge stone mesa soaring up above the rocky hill further along the beach, the turtle lady nodded as she recognized the towering landmark.

"Golly, so I am! But that means, unless the hidden oasis on Pararakelse Island is actually heaven, I didn't die after all," Mutsumi told herself out loud, emitting a huge sigh of relief from her over endowed chest at her miraculous survival. "Tama-chan saved me, just like she promised! Thank goodness!"

"Myuh, myuh," the tiny turtle between her hair antennae told her, then promptly fell asleep.

"Oh, thank you, Tama-chan!" the grateful girl gushed. "If you hadn't, I really don't know what Mrs. Haruka would have said to me if someone had phoned her to tell her that I had turned up dead tomorrow morning for my job at the Tea Rooms. Oh, dear! And the customers…they might have thought it was the food that had killed me, and left. I wouldn't have had any work to do, _or_ made any money all day!"

Then Mutsumi looked back down at her young welcoming party, whom, for some unknown reason, were now giving her very strange and uncertain looks. After a moments thought, Mutsumi brightened up again, as an idea popped into her head as to why this was so.

The turtle girl knew that children loved gifts. Doubtless, these ones would prove to be no exception. And since they were now on a sunny summer beach, she had just the thing at hand to lighten the mood of her young audience.

Reaching behind her back, the turtle girl then produced several of her trademark presents, handing them out with an even bigger smile to her now even more confused-looking hosts.

"Wh-what's up with her, Masayuki-kun," Little Naru whispered in English to her older brother, shivering slightly despite the heat as she eyed both Mutsumi and the weighty watermelon in her sagging hands with trepidation. "It's scary the way she was talking about walking around dead, just then. And what is this green thing? It's heavy!"

"I don't know, Naru-chan," that worthy murmured back, a panicky look on his own face, dropping his own watermelon like it was red-hot. As it impacted with a loud thud at his feet, he added, "But get ready to run. Su-san told me that that the mad have strength!"

"Well now, who wants to play 'smash the watermelon'?" Mutsumi then enthused, also pulling a baseball bat out of nowhere, to joyfully break open her own watermelon with it. _"Whack! Fu, fu, fu!"_

She then gestured with her bat at the cluster of trembling kids.

"So, who wants to be next?"

It was some time before Keitaro's spooked children dared come down from the tops of the coconut palms. And only then after Tama-chan had eaten half of the turtle lady's split watermelon, and personally vouched to them all that the now very apologetic, teary eyed Mutsumi was indeed both harmless and clinically sane.

-:-:-:-:-:-

While this fiasco of a first meeting was going on, behind the natural stone tower that loomed high above the lake, the returning time machine had by now completed its descent into the spacious hilltop hanger and settled down onto its launch pad, safely home at last.

"_Whew!_ We made it," Keitaro breathed out over the quickly diminishing whining sound of their engines powering down, feeling his tension ebbing away like an outgoing tide now that their esoteric machine had made a perfect landing. "Geez, it was touch-and-go with our escape for awhile, but we actually did it, Su. We made it to 2002 and then back home alive! You're a genius!"

"As if there was ever any doubt," Su grinned back to him, relief at their survival showing in her own eyes. Then her smile faded. "I know that we saved Naru and Kuro, and Tama-chan got Mutsumi, but it still rankles me that we couldn't bring all of the others back with us on this trip. Even after all of these years, I miss my pal, Motoko, more than I could ever put into words…"

Keitaro let out a resigned sigh, a look of disappointment reappearing on his own face at being reminded of their failure.

"Yeah. Me, too. However, on the bright side, I remember you telling me just before that you've managed to collect all of the data that you need to plot another time jump journey back to 2002. But with Naru safely back here with us, our situation has changed forever, and so...? Well, Su, I've got a really hard decision to make about what exactly I should now do for the best."

"Oh?" Su raised an eyebrow, a sad look appearing in her moistening, jade green, emotion-filled eyes. "Kei-Baby? Don't tell me that after all of this time together, you actually still feel the need to choose between Naru and-?"

Keitaro stared at her suddenly pale and anxious face, and then the light of understanding dawned in his own eyes. "Oh, _no!_ No, nothing like that, Su," he quickly reassured the worried Molmol woman, sweat flying from his forehead at her misunderstanding. "What I'm trying in a not very clear way to say right now, is do we risk another trip back through time to 2002, find Kanako and Kitsune and any other survivors, and then bring them back here like we've just done with Naru and Mutsumi? Or do we forgo the trip and leave them back in 2002, so once their protective zero-time fields switch off again in seven days time, they can continue on living their lives back in the past? _That's_ the hard decision I have to make, not anything to do with my personal life!"

"'_Whew!'_ Thank goodness!" Su managed a weak laugh at her error of judgement. "But you sure had me worried there for a second, Sweetie. I didn't think that after twelve years and a bunch of great kids, you'd actually throw all of that away, even for Naru. But it's nice to have you say so and be sure."

"I used a bad choice of words, I know. Sorry. You know all too well that I can't help still loving Naru, and I guess that I always will. But I now realize that I love what we've built for ourselves right here much more than even her. You can trust me to do the right thing, Su, and that's a promise."

"I know I can, and that's one of the things that I love about you Kei-Baby. You always keep your word, no matter what." Su then leaned forward and gave him an affectionate peck on his near cheek. "That's for being so faithful to your ever-loving wife."

"You'll have me blushing next," Keitaro remarked, grinning back at the admiration-filled, youthful woman. "But before I go all red and bashful, back to the subject at hand."

"Carry on, Loverboy," Kaolla chuckled, settling back into her seat with an anticipatory look on her now smiling face.

"'_Ahem!'_ All right. And stop winking, you're distracting me!"

"Sorry. I'll be good," she promised. "So, tell me what's on your mind."

"Okay. My problem is this," Keitaro began, rubbing thoughtfully at his chin with one gloved hand. "Since we've already saved Naru and Mutsumi and gotten them back to 2027 with us, and we're also pretty sure that the other girls from the Hinata Apartments are now alive and safe as well, do we even need to risk another trip back through time to find them?"

"But before I can make up my mind, I need a little more information from you. Su, please answer me this. Even though it looks like your rescue pods managed to pull Kanako and the others out of the blast zone and into their pre-programmed destinations in time, do you think that they will still be in any danger from radioactive fallout once the zero-time fields protecting them switch off?"

"Yeah, good question, Kei-Baby," the attractive woman mused. "But, all things considering, and provided everything went to plan, I'd say that the other residents who survived should be just fine when they finally emerge from the stasis fields of their rescue pods. Everyone will have automatically been given their anti-radiation shots as soon as they were grabbed, and after a week of being safely underground and frozen in time, any airborne radioactive particles would have dispersed sufficiently to pose no threat to their escape from the locality. So, maybe you've got a point. As much as I'd like to see Motoko and Kanako and our other friends again, maybe it _would_ be best if they stayed back in the world that they knew, to start their lives over again as best they can?"

"That's fine and dandy, Su," Keitaro stated. "If we only knew for sure that they all _had_ definitely survived unharmed. But we don't. Especially Shinobu. And I, for one, am not keen on spending the rest of my life waking up in the middle of the night, endlessly wondering about whether she and they made it, or not."

"Ditto, Kei-Baby," Su glumly conceded. "If we don't risk another trip, I'd always have that niggling worry in the back of my mind, too. So, to partially quote the bard, _'To go, or not to go, that is the question.'_ Personally, I'm of two minds about this, just like you are. So I'll leave this one in your capable hands. Whatever you decide to do is fine by me."

"Gee, thanks!" Keitaro sarcastically thanked his partner. "And that's just it; I really _don't_ know what to do now, Su. I mean, we did it! We actually succeeded in saving Naru, and now she's right here with us in the back of your time machine, alive. _Alive!_ My god, she was all that I lived for before the disaster screwed up our lives and she died. After that happened, I was a mental wreck for years. And then, there was you, and I was happy again. And after that – well, I'm getting off subject here. What I'm really trying to say is that I should be happy that we made it back here with her, and I _am,_ but only to a point. Like I said before, if we don't go back and at least attempt to find the other girls, I'm going to worry about what _could_ have happened to them for the rest of my life."

"Point taken. But I'm worried about what could happen to _us_, if we attempt another jump and something goes wrong," Kaolla replied, frowning slightly as her active imagination kicked in. "Time travel is as risky as hell, Keitaro, and with a young family to worry about, on top of that…? If something vital blows on the ship while it's in the past, and I can't fix it with what I've got on board, there's a very, very good chance that we'll never see home or the kids again. _Ever._ And the chances of rescue are zero. The only reason that we risked it in the first place was to save the lives of our friends, remember?"

"Yes, that's been in the back of my mind since before we departed on our first trip," Keitaro informed the blonde, green eyed, tanned beauty. "And here's something else for us to chew on. If we do go back again and manage to find the other girls, this time it won't be to save them from your reactor exploding, but for our own personal desires. Do we have the right to bring them back here to the future Pararakelse Island, to live in exile with us for probably the rest of their lives?"

"That might not necessarily have to happen, Keitaro," Su disputed. "You gotta remember that it's 2027 here, now. Twenty-five years have passed since the atomic explosion, and to the world at large, it's ancient history."

"However, with regards to people's memories of you and I, that's a far different kettle of bananas," she continued. "You were the landlord of the Hinata Apartments, and I was the one with the highly illegal nuclear reactor in my room. There were – and probably still are – photographs and descriptions of us in every police station in the whole world! And there are people on Molmol who know that we're still alive. The world isn't gonna forget the two of us, are they?"

"Depressing, but true," Keitaro conceded, looking even glummer at being reminded of their 'Public Enemy Number One' status.

"But with the other residents, if we do bring them here, it'll be a different story," Su pointed out to him. "Quite apart from everyone thinking that they died in the explosion a quarter of a century ago, even Kitsune, who is the oldest of them, is only twenty-one – four years younger that the date of the explosion! There's _no-way_ that people who see her or any of the other girls could possibly think that she or they were _even born_ at the time of the infamous Hinata Hot Springs Nuclear Disaster, let alone lived through it and escaped through time to the here-and-now, are they?"

"Yes, that's a good point, Su," her fellow time traveller agreed, letting out another sigh. "Look, I'm definitely going to have to think some more on this. I'll sleep on it, maybe? But if we do decide to go back to check on the other survivors, this time we'll definitely finish the job, okay. And hopefully we'll find out just where Shinobu got to, as well."

"Yep, this time!" Su resolutely agreed, determination shining in her eyes as she shook Keitaro's outstretched hand. "Hey, on the subject of survivors, how's Naru doing back there?"

"She's still out like a light," Keitaro remarked, glancing fondly back at the limp form of the beautiful teenage girl slumped forward in her restraining harness, the only occupant – save Kuro – of the spacious and depressingly empty passenger compartment. Then he took a quick look through the front window into the illuminated hanger they were parked in. "Now that the exhaust gases from the jets have cleared outside the ship, we can stretcher Naru over to the house and let her rest in the room that we prepared for her until the tranquillizer you gave her wears off."

"Good plan, Kei-Baby," Su agreed, unbuckling her own safety harness, then rising up from the pilot's seat. "I'll just grab a hover-lifter for Naru-yan, and then you two had best go straight off to the decontamination room for a good wash down and full check-up, before you go anywhere else. I know that you've both already had your anti-radiation shots, but its best not to take any chances with you or your contaminated gear. I've gotta stay here in the hanger for awhile to safely power down the time machine's fusion reactor, and then I'll be doing the same."

"C'mon, Kuro, you have to come too," the ex-_ronin_ called out to his younger sister's cat, and then turned back to his companion. "Hey, Su. How long will our physical check-up take, anyway?"

"Only a few minutes," Su reassured him. "It's fully automated, so all you have to do once you've taken off your clothes and dumped them into the chute in the wall, is enter the chamber and stand there until the green exit light comes on."

Su then directed a sly, knowing grin at him, having noticed the slightly uncomfortable look that had just appeared on her partner's reddening face.

"Yes, you're going to have to take off Naru's clothes, too, Kei-Baby," she told him with relish. "You think that you can handle doing that, without losing control of two of your bodily functions in particular?"

Keitaro's blush deepened at Su's teasing words, and he fidgeted uncomfortably as he recognized the grain of truth behind her flippant comment. He had been secretly wondering that very same thing about himself, too…

"_Grrr!_ Of – of course I can," he yelped, deciding to nip in the bud right then and there, any improper thoughts that might be springing into the head of his Molmol partner. "Just because I haven't seen Naru in twenty-five years, doesn't mean that I'm going to…to-!"

"Oh, yes it does," Su laughed back, completely at ease with the situation. "Not that I'm jealous of Naru, of course," she hastened to point out to the flustered man. "You and I have been through far too much together, and we know each other far too well for me to ever need to worry about you doing anything inappropriate with her, especially now that you've acknowledged to me that you're a happily and faithfully married man with kids!"

"Uh, yeah…I know all that, Su," Keitaro replied in a mollified tone. "And you can count on me to behave. I give you my word."

"Geez, there's no need to do that, Kei-Baby. Just get going, willya? If I were the slightest bit worried about you getting up to any hanky-panky with Naru in decontamination, I'd be the one stripping her down in there, not you."

Then a thoughtful look appeared on Kaolla's smiling face. "Mind you, Naru certainly has a great figure, doesn't she, Kei-Baby. And she sure must look good to you, especially after all of this time-?"

"_Erm?!_ Right…!" Keitaro coughed out, feeing a certain part of his anatomy beginning to stir at the nosebleed-inducing thought of what he would soon be seeing. "I'm going now - _bye…!"_

-:-:-:-:-:-

Fifteen minutes later, the still pink-cheeked family man that Keitaro Urashima had now become, resplendent in a fresh set of clothes, departed the hanger complex. After exiting the doorway, he turned left onto a concrete path, heading with the still sleeping, now robe-clad Naru on her floating trolley towards the natural stone tower that contained his sizeable home.

As he strolled down the walkway that led to the front entrance to the mesa, the hot desert breeze fanning at his hair, and with Kuro drifting contently along in his wake, Keitaro both looked and was deep in thought. His mind was still somewhat fixated on the vision of loveliness he had guiltily glimpsed whilst first undressing and then placing the still unconscious Naru into the decontamination chamber. Seeing Naru in the buff had brought back an unbidden rush of old, half forgotten memories of his previous life at the destroyed Hinata Apartments, when seeing Naru naked had been an all too common occurrence for him. Some of these memories were good, but most were bad, usually featuring a sudden sharp pain to his face from Naru's fist or foot, and then the sensation of flying in an uncontrollable fashion through the air.

The landings hadn't been fun, either. Especially the time he had come down through the roof of the locked greenhouse full of beehives…

So absorbed was Keitaro with these bittersweet memories, at first he didn't hear the sweet, feminine voice excitedly calling out his name from ahead of him. As the welcoming calls finally registered in his preoccupied mind, the returning rescuer looked up from Naru's sleeping body, to spot the blue-haired girl-woman to whom the voice belonged, running happily along the path towards him.

"Keitaro! You're back safely! Thank god!" the late-teen appearing girl cried out to him in English, flinging her slender arms tightly around his chest in a warm hug of welcome. "I was really worried about you and Su, you know?!"

"Hiya, Sweetie. _Ah-heh-heh_. Yeah, I'm back in one piece," Keitaro replied, hugging the young woman tightly in return. "And so is Su, too," Keitaro hastened to add, seeing her mouth open and forestalling the next question that he knew was coming.

"Thank goodness!" then the light-brown tanned beauty looked down at the senseless girl whom he was pushing along in front of him, and her dark blue eyes grew wide with joyous recognition.

"Oh my goodness! I recognize that face. That's – Naru Narusegawa, isn't it? So you managed to save her, after all! But, she's not moving. Is she all right?"

"Yep. Su shot her full of tranquillizer, so she'll be fine once it wears off. Oh, yeah, and we also saved Kuro, Kanako's cat, too," Keitaro declared as he released her slender body again. "Kuro, come say 'hi' to-"

"Oh, what a dear little kitty!" The young woman gushed out, reaching upwards to pat the flying cat on his fuzzy head. "Hi, Kuro!"

"Meow!" Kuro politely replied, his red eyes widening with surprise at the familiar appearance of his hostess, and a big smile appearing on his tiny face as he enjoyed the sensation of having the spot behind his oversized, left-hand-side ear scratched.

"But as for the others - well, Kanako and Kitsune, anyway – Su's rescue pods managed to get them safely away from ground zero, before the place blew," Keitaro continued, bringing his lovely companion's attention away from the hovering cat and back to him. "We know from the telemetry that we received before we made our jump back here that Kanako's pod, at least, made it underground and switched on its zero-time field before the signal cut out. And we're sure that Kitsune's pod got away, too…but, as for the other residents…?" He spread his hands in a gesture of ambiguity.

"The others? You mean Motoko and – and - _oh, no?! Shinobu! Oh, please tell me that they survived too?!"_

Keitaro's shoulders slumped. "We're not sure," he explained in a despondent tone to the now distraught, teary-eyed young woman, his own spirits taking a nosedive again at the very real possibility that the little blue-haired cook hadn't made it. "However, on a positive note, it looks like Shinobu wasn't actually at the Hinata Apartments when the reactor blew up, and that's something, I guess? But, as to _where_ she could have gone…well, no one knows."

Then Keitaro was struck by a thought. "Hey, I just remembered that Su did find a note from her while she was searching the kitchen, but we haven't had time to read it yet."

"I hope that Shinobu's all right!" the young woman sobbed, leaning forward into his arms again for comfort. "You and Su told me that she looked so much like me! I would have loved to have seen – _'sniff!'_ S-sorry, I'm just so worried about her…"

"And I'm sorry that I've distressed you, Sweetie. But this next bit of news should cheer you up a bit," Keitaro then said, scratching at the back of his tousled head with his free hand. "Tama-chan and Mutsumi Otohime - they both survived as well, thank god! But it was a very close thing, I can tell you! We had to leave before they had arrived back from the Hinata Tea Rooms, or else we would have been caught in the explosion when the nuclear reactor blew. Luckily, Tama-chan managed to fly Mutsumi into the wormhole before it closed, and they followed the time machine through it and out this side. Su managed to get a reading on Mutsumi, and found out that she was having one of her fainting spells, so there was no chance of her suffocating during our short hop back to 2027, which was a huge relief to us! But we were running really short on fuel for the lifting jets by this time, so we couldn't stay up there next to the opening to pick them up when they emerged. It was either land straight away, or run the risk of crashing, I'm afraid…"

At his beautiful companion's sharp intake of breath, Keitaro hurried added, "But they're both all right. The last we saw of them, Tama-chan was flying Mutsumi down towards the lake, so they both would have had a soft landing in the water even if Tama-chan did become too worn out to keep her in the air any more. As soon as I get Naru into her new room, I'm off down there to welcome Mutsumi and bring her back up here to the house, too."

"That's great news!" the tanned beauty cheered, brightening up a bit after hearing of Tama-chan's successful rescue of the turtle girl. "So that's two of the residents whom you managed to save and bring back here, as well as Kuro. But…you still haven't told me what happened to Motoko Aoyama, yet…? Little Motoko is sure to want to know whether her hero survived, or not."

Even as the young woman asked her hesitant question, Naru let out a soft moan, immediately drawing their full attention back to her weakly moving body.

"I will, but first we'd best get Naru inside and out of the hot sun," Keitaro stated, looking down anxiously at his charge, then quickly moving to stand where his shadow would fall across Naru's face and protect it from the direct glare of the solar furnace burning high in the western sky. "She's not at all used to this desert heat! I'll fill you in on what we know of Motoko's situation as we walk, okay?"

_Although the heat here is nothing compared to what she would've been subjected to if I hadn't gotten her out of the apartments before they were destroyed,_ he grimly thought.

"Yes, I think that we'd better," the bluenette quickly agreed, her concern for her unconscious guest overriding her burning curiosity for the moment. "The nearest spare room is on the ground floor near the front entrance, but you're right, it would be best to take Naru up to the room that you and Su have especially prepared for her, on the second floor. We'll put her to bed there, and then you can go straight down the terraces to the lake shore and find Mutsumi and Tama-chan."

"That sounds like a plan to me," Keitaro agreed as he started the hover-lifter moving along the path once again. "Let's go."

As the pair pushed Naru's hovering makeshift stretcher towards their lofty destination, Keitaro remembered something very unusual that he had noticed as he was departing their time craft to take the comatose Naru to decontamination.

"Hey, you're here, but where are Masayuki and the rest of my brat pack?" he asked, curiosity on his face and in his voice. "Su and I thought that they'd be all over us the second that we walked out of the time machine. There I was, all braced for the welcome wagon, but they were nowhere to be found inside the hanger, or outside of it. What's going on?"

"I'm not too sure myself," the bluenette admitted, a slight frown appearing on her own forehead as she looked thoughtfully up at her chin-scratching senior. "I don't know where Little Shinobu and Motoko are, but I did see Masayuki and the twins haring off down towards the lake a while ago, before you and Su had even arrived back here. But, as to what they're up to, I really have no idea."

"Hmmm. That's strange," Keitaro mused. "Ah, well, I dare say that I'll find out all about what mischief they were up to when they show up again. But at least their absence will give me a chance to get Naru inside and tucked away into her room without them climbing all over me and her, pestering me for details about the rescue."

"Yes, and you're bound to run into Masayuki, Kimiaki and Little Naru when you go down to the beach to welcome Mutsumi to her new home, anyway," the young woman smiled up at him. "So enjoy the peace and quiet while you can!"

"Yeah," Keitaro replied, nodding vigorously in agreement. _"Heh._ And I wouldn't be at all surprised if the reason for their tardiness is that those three miscreants have already found Mutsumi and Tama-chan for me. Poor Mutsumi! Right now, they're probably busy tossing her and Tama-chan in a blanket to celebrate their arrival, or something like that?"

His beautiful companion laughed. "No doubt you're right, Keitaro," she merrily agreed. "As if escaping from a nuclear explosion wasn't enough for the poor girl. Now she's run into Kimiaki-kun and Naru-chan. Talk about jumping out of the frying pan into the fire!"

Since at this very moment the aforementioned children were fleeing up the sloping trunks of the nearest three coconut palms in a frantic effort to escape from the turtle girl, whom all three were by now totally convinced was a baseball-bat-wielding psycho, Kimiaki and Little Naru would definitely _not_ have agreed with their older bluenette relative's uncomplimentary observation.

-:-:-:-:-:-

Despite having been well and truly tranquillized by Su, as she was being moved around the left flank of the gigantic rock mesa to where it fell away in a series of shaped and landscaped ledges and small plateaus, connected by small concrete staircases, to the lake shore below, Naru somehow managed to momentarily regain semi-consciousness. Blinking and squinting against the bright desert light as her eyes flickered open, Naru instinctively turned her face away from the blazing sun, her sudden movement going unnoticed by the two chatting people she could dimly hear striding along behind her.

A moment or so later, after cautiously reopening her watering eyes, the dazed and confused teen then caught a fleeting glimpse of a large, lumbering, brick-red and yellow colored shape – a giant turtle or tortoise, perhaps? Through her blurry vision, she could just make out the huge creature gambolling across the nearest lawn, heading down through the rising heat waves towards a small crowd of what could only be children, who she could just make out in the middle distance, running around like ants on the white sand beach.

_Wha-?! Where am I…? It's so hot! What's…what's happening to me…?_

_And why am I seeing a turtle…?_

But before Naru's numb brain could draw any conclusions from this surprising sight, she lapsed back into soothing unconsciousness once again.

-:-:-:-:-:-

When Naru Narusegawa came to for the second time, it didn't take her long to realize that she was now laying comfortably in a bed. As her memories came flooding back, her eyes jerked open with fright and she rolled over onto her side, to see, with a huge surge of relief, that she was back in her own room at the Hinata Apartments.

Naru sighed lustily and relaxed again, the comfort derived from her familiar surroundings causing her nervous tension to begin to quickly fade away. The young brunette's head flopped back down onto her soft pillow, and she stared up at the ceiling, her mind still thinking about the bizarre dream she had experienced during the nap that she had obviously been having.

_What in the hell did I have in my breakfast this morning? _Naru wondered, a slight frown creasing her forehead as she just then noticed she wasn't feeling particularly well at that moment. _I feel a bit shaky, and my head hurts… And as for that dream I was having just before…? Wow._

_But the dream seemed to be so real! I was up in Su's room with her lunch, and next second her nuclear reactor started to go haywire. Then the room caught on fire, and I knew that I was going to die! Brrrr! Freaky…!_

_Next thing I know, a purple whirlpool opens up, and a UFO comes through it. Then Keitaro, of all people, jumps out of it and zaps me with some sort of ray gun. I fall over; he stabs me in the ass, and then – nothing…_

Naru grimaced at the painful memory, and instinctively felt a momentary surge of anger at her clueless classmate's actions. _Heh! But that's just what I'd expect from that pervert,_ she reminded herself_. If I thought for even a minute that he'd done that to me for real, I'd–!_

Then the sore teen abruptly caught hold of her negative emotions. The abashed girl made a visible effort to relax once again as she realized that she was getting all worked up over absolutely nothing.

_No, wait… What in the heck am I thinking? Ah-heh-heh. Calm down, Naru, all of this only happened in the dream that you had, you idiot! I can't get mad at Keitaro just because I've got a vivid imagination. I've got to remember that I have to apologize to poor Keitaro, not dream up fanciful excuses to beat him up again…!_

_And, now that I think about it, I kinda felt…good…when I saw Keitaro suddenly appear out of that UFO to rescue me from Su's room in my dream,_ Naru admitted silently to herself, a faint smile tugging at the corners of her lips as she recalled the unexpected jolt that her heart had given her at the sight of him, and the warm, anticipatory feeling that she had felt in the second before he had zapped her. _But then the dork screwed it up by shooting me! I can't remember much of what happened after that, but I think I felt him lift me up to carry me away, and then…my mind's a blank, darn it!_

_...Well, I do faintly remember something about being really hot, and seeing a huge tortoise…but what that has to do with anything, I just don't know. Maybe I'm just going insane with regret after beaning Keitaro with my teapot before breakfast? Yeah, right?!_

_Darn that dream, it's got me really jumpy, now. But why did I have it in the first place? Hmmm? I wonder if it had anything to do with the Indian curry that Shinobu made for breakfast this morning. The curry was delicious, but it was also rather hot to the taste…_

_…Or maybe I'm coming down with a fever? That would certainly explain those weird dreams just now…and the hot sensation that I felt upon my face when I saw that tortoise. Maybe I'd best check, just in case…_

Quickly Naru reached up with her right hand, to lay its palm upon her throbbing forehead. She quickly noticed that while her forehead was, indeed, slightly warmer than her palm, it wasn't by much. She certainly didn't have any fever to speak of.

_Nope, as far as I can tell, my temperature seems to be normal enough,_ she silently decided, her now open eyes narrowing with puzzlement as she tried to think her situation through. _So, if I don't have a fever, and since I seriously doubt that Shinobu's cooking was responsible for my strange dreams, then that means…maybe it wasn't a dream at all?_

"No, that can't be right?!" Naru gasped out, hurriedly sitting back up on her futon again, to stare wildly around at the familiar surrounds of her room. "I'm back in my own room, so it _had_ to be only a dream! There's _no-way_ that everything that I just went through could have happened for real…_could it?"_

_I need to talk to someone about this, right now. I wonder if Keitaro's back yet…?_

Rolling out of her futon back up onto her feet, the now very uneasy and not a little frightened teen hurried over to her 'Liddo-kun' plushy sitting on the sheet of plywood that covered the hole in the wooden floor above Keitaro's room. After removing Liddo-kun, she yanked up the plywood sheet, to stare down at-

-A polished stone floor that was directly under the jagged hole rimmed by the broken floorboards?!

"_Wha-?! What in the hell is going on?!"_

_Knock-knock!_

"_Um, Naru?_ Naru, it's…it's me, Keitaro. And Su. Ca-can we come in to talk to you for a minute?"

Naru whirled around to face the door to her room, relief replacing the alarmed expression on her lovely face. _"Keitaro!_ Come in! You, too, Su," she quickly affirmed. "There's something really strange going on in here, and I really need to talk to you about it!"

Then Naru remembered what she had done to her hapless landlord that very morning, and a large sweat-drop appeared on her brow. "Don't worry, I'm decent!" she quickly added, just to put his mind at rest on that score.

"'_Ahem!'_ All - all right, we're coming in now," the still nervous sounding Keitaro announced, his tone hesitant.

As the still wary Keitaro stepped forward into Naru's oh-so-familiar room, and he saw her standing right there in front of him, just for a single precious moment the long years fell away, and he was a young man of twenty-one again, back with the girl that he had so desperately loved – and lost.

For a heart-stopping minute, he believed that everything that had happened in the quarter of a century since then had been nothing but one long, bizarre dream, and that he had finally awaked back into his old, beloved life once again.

But then, as Keitaro glanced sideways through his tearing eyes at the now grown up Kaolla Su, the spell was broken, and at long last he knew in his aching heart that both time and the chance to live and love their lives together had passed him and Naru by.

He finally accepted that the dream of going to Tokyo U with Naru Narusegawa, marrying her, and living happily ever after with her as man and wife was over.

But she was alive. Naru was alive once again. He and Su had saved her from her ghastly fate, and in the final scheme of things, that was all that really mattered.

He could never now have her as his wife, but he _could_ have her as his friend. And that would just have to be enough – for both of them.

"Keitaro? _Hello?_ Why are you looking at me in that strange way?" Naru uneasily inquired of him, her smile of welcome fading, to be replaced by a puzzled look as she belatedly realized that something about the slightly nervous appearing _ronin_ didn't quite seem right. But she couldn't quite put her finger on it yet.

And just who was that familiar-looking, well-endowed woman - dressed in a half-unbuttoned blue and white sailor _fuku_, of all things - standing next to him? Could she be Kaolla's older sister, Amalla Su? No… while they looked very similar, Amalla had been taller…

Naru then noticed that the woman's hair was a yellower shade than that of Amalla's…and those green eyes – _hold on!_

"Su? _Su, is that you?!"_

"Yup. Heyo, Naru-yan! Long time, no see. So, how do ya like the older me?"

"_Wha-what?!_ Su, it _is_ you! But you look all grown up," the stunned Naru babbled, her disbelieving eyes wide and protruding from her pale and sweating face. Then her gaze involuntarily dropped to her friend's very impressive, half-exposed cleavage. "And when did you get that…chest-?"

Then Naru realized just what it was that had been troubling her about Keitaro. And it wasn't just the fact that he seemed to be taller, stronger looking, and was no longer wearing glasses, either…!

"And Keitaro – you look to be older, too! B-but, _why? _And how come you've suddenly got a dark tan like Su's? _Will someone just tell me what in the hell is going on around here?!"_

So Keitaro and Su did just that. After closing the sliding door behind them for privacy, they both explained everything to the alarmed and confused teen, leaving nothing out with regards to the horrific fate that had befallen their former home. They gently and compassionately broke the news to their ashen-faced, shocked friend about the atomic explosion that had destroyed Hinata Hot Springs twenty-five years ago, their miraculous escape from it, their crash at the oasis on Pararakelse Island, and finally, their partially successful rescue mission back through time to save her and the others from death.

When Keitaro and Su had finally finished recounting their tragic tale, Su leaned sympathetically forward and took the distraught teen into her arms to comfort her, until Naru had finally cried it all out.

"So…so it wasn't just a strange dream that I was having, after all," Naru blubbered, trying hard to compose herself and talk coherently, clinging tightly to her once younger, but now decades-older friend, as the adult version of Su dabbed at her wet cheeks with a tissue. "This all…really happened to me? The fire in your room, Su, your nuclear reactor going out of control, _everything…?"_

"Yes, Naru. It did," Kaolla confirmed, kissing her gently on her forehead. "I'm so sorry for what you've been through."

"And…everything is gone? The apartments – even Hinata Hot Springs, itself…?"

"Yes, that's true, too," Keitaro admitted, laying a sympathetic hand on her shivering arm. "It really happened. Your old life at the Hinata Apartments is over. But the good news, Naru, is that _you_ are alive and unharmed, we are alive – even though Su and I are a lot older than you are, now – and we think that most, if not all of the other residents managed to escape the explosion, too." _Everyone except Shinobu, and maybe Motoko,_ he added under his breath. _But I'd best not bring that up in front of Naru right now. With what she's just had to deal with from us, she's under enough stress as it is. _

"So…where are the others, anyway?" Naru hesitantly asked, rubbing at her tear-streaming red eyes with the palm of her right hand as Su released her and stepped back for a couple of paces. "Kitsune, and Motoko, and Shinobu, and Mutsumi, and Kanako? _'Sniff!'_ Are they all here with us now, too?"

"Well, Mutsumi is, Tama-chan is, and so is Kuro. Kitsune, Kanako and Motoko are still back in 2002, but our rescue pods got them out of the danger zone in time, and they're all now in safe places, well away from where the blast happened. So they all should be just fine."

_We hope,_ Keitaro and Su simultaneously thought.

"Oh. That's…good! And I'm glad that Mutsumi is here with me, too. But what about Shinobu?" Naru inquired, looking much happier now that she knew of her friends' survival, but not failing to notice that a prominent name had been left off her ex-landlord's list of refugees. "What happened to her, Keitaro? Su? Please tell me!"

At her uncomfortable question, Keitaro and Su exchanged a worried look this time.

"Well, we're…not sure," he finally and reluctantly admitted, matching beads of nervous sweat on his and Kaolla's faces. "We couldn't find her anywhere. Truth to tell, we don't even know whether she was still at the apartments at the time of the explosion, or not."

"Actually, we were hoping that maybe you could tell us whether Shinobu was there at the time, Naru," Su pensively added. "Neither I, nor my rescue pods could find her during the rescue, and I searched real hard. So, do you know…?"

"Me? Well, I don't know either, actually. After breakfast was over, I spent all of the morning studying in my room. I only came out to make lunch, and there was no sign of Shinobu anywhere, then. I do remember seeing a note pinned to the kitchen door that may have been from her, but I was too busy to read it at the time."

"Oh, that's right?" Su gasped out. "I found that note, too, and brought it with me! But I left it in my time machine. I'll go back there and get it once I make sure that you're going to be all right, Naru. But I'm sure that Shinobu is fine."

"I hope so," Naru sniffed. "So…now what, guys? You've saved me, and I'm so grateful for that! But you're also telling me that our old lives are gone forever, and we're now in the future. In…2027, you said?"

"Yes, that's right," Keitaro confirmed. "We're at the hidden oasis in the middle of the Desert of Death on Pararakelse Island. Our new home is here, and it has been for the last twenty-five years, now."

_Twenty-five years!_ Naru thought, abruptly remembering what she had been planning to tell Keitaro the very night the disaster happened, now a quarter-century in the past. _They – he - must have been so lonely living here for all of that time. But now that I'm here with Keitaro, should I…should I tell him right now how I feel about him? I know that he really likes me, and he and Su did save me from a horrible death, so at the very least I owe him the truth about my real feelings towards him…! I think that I'm finally ready for us to be together…_

"Keitaro, I…I…! _Um?"_

"Yes, Naru?"

"Um, Keitaro – I have a confession to make. I think that we, you and I, should try to – _um? _I mean, despite this horrible thing that's just happened to our lives, at least we have now a chance to be together – to see if things really can work out between us," Naru self-consciously declared, somehow managing a brave, though pink-cheeked smile as she actually reached out to embrace him – _him_, of all people. "I'm so sorry for what I did to you this morning – well, _heh-heh_, this morning twenty-five years ago now, I guess? I want you to know that I - _um_ - that I _do_ like you, Keitaro, _a lot_, and the fact that you're older now doesn't matter to me, because I really want us to have a fresh start…"

Then her voice trailed off as Keitaro held up his right palm in a sign for her to stop. He wanted to take the contrite Naru up on her offer of her love – but he knew that he couldn't. Not now. Not ever.

"What? What is it, Keitaro?"

"No. I'm…I'm sorry to have to tell you this, Naru, but – no, we can't…"

"Wh-what? But why, Keitaro?" Naru inquired, surprise and puzzlement in her eyes and tone. After all that Keitaro had done to rescue her from the hellfire that had consumed their previous lives, this was the absolute last thing that she had expected him to say at her offer to give him all that he had ever wanted from her. Then more than just a touch of trepidation crept into her voice as she anxiously asked, "D-don't you love me any more after what I did to you this morning?"

_So, now she finally acknowledges that I love her,_ Keitaro thought, the anxious words of the girl he would have once died for, tugging at his heartstrings. _And that she loves me in return. Why-oh-why couldn't we have had this conversation twenty-five years and one day ago, before this tragedy ever happened to screw up all of our lives? But… if that had happened, then Su and I, we would never have had what we did. And then after that…the building of our home, my marriage, the children…none of our present life here would have even existed._

_But I have to admit that I still carry my decades old love for Naru. It's the truth, and I owe it to her, and to myself, to tell her of what we could have had…had fate been kinder to us…_

"Yes. Yes, I…still do. I'll always love you, Naru, until the day I die, and – if possible - after that, as well," Keitaro answered, a deep sadness in his strong, mature voice as he stared into her wide-open eyes, still slightly red from her weeping. "But I can't be with you in that way now, because my circumstances have changed…_a lot."_

"What – what do you mean, changed?" Then Naru's own questioning eyes were drawn to the for once quiet shape of the Molmol woman standing just behind him. Her eyes widened even more as everything seemed to click into place.

"Oh?! Do you mean…that you and Su are – p-partners, now, and those children I noticed earlier on down at the beach are yours…?" Naru asked, a quaver of anxiety mixed with disappointment conspicuous behind her hesitant words. She knew that she didn't really want to hear the answer to that question, but – she _had_ to know.

_But why should I be even the slightest bit surprised if they are,_ Naru thought bitterly to herself, steeling herself for the worst. _Keitaro and Su have been here all alone for twenty-five years, and they both knew that I was dead – well, up until now, that is?_

"Gee, I wish," Su spoke up in reply, more than a trace of regret in her own still youthful voice. "But, no, I'm not their real mother. Well, I sorta _am_ a mother to them, but not their biological one…_darn it."_

"_What?!"_ Naru exclaimed in surprise, Su's answer being the exact opposite to the one that she had been dreading. "You-you're not?!"

"No, Su can never have children. The radiation made sure of that," Keitaro regretfully explained. "Heaven knows, we tried for long enough. The younger Su was much closer to the reactor core meltdown than I was before she made her escape, you see, and so her body absorbed a much higher dose of radiation than mine did. The small amount of damage done to me was fully reversible, Su's wasn't – even though we discovered that her body has the same rapid healing abilities as mine."

Despite her anxiety and confusion, Naru's eyes filled with tears. "Oh, Su, I'm so sorry…!" Then her mind once again visualized the light brown children she had seen upon her arrival. "Then – then, if it's not you, Su, who exactly _is_ their mother? Tell me, Keitaro…"

At that moment, right on cue, the quiet figure of a beautiful girl-like woman opened the door and stepped into the room. A familiar face peered at the stunned Naru – an achingly familiar face that she instantly recognised, because the quarter century that had passed since she had seen that person last had been traversed in mere moments during her rescue through time.

_"Sh-Shinobu…?! You survived too?! Bu-but Keitaro, you just told me you didn't know whether-!"_

But then the cry of delight died in Naru's throat as she noticed something strange about the newcomer. This remarkably un-aged appearing woman would have been identical to a grown up version of her dear and now probably deceased friend, Shinobu – save for two minor things. Her face was tanned the exact same light shade of brown as Su's, a tan that had come from a far hotter and more tropical sun than that of Japan. And then there was that red ribbon still worn in her longer, tied back, dark blue hair…

"Naru, I'd like you to meet someone," Keitaro spoke up, a trace of pride in his voice as he firmly put away the twinge of regret he felt at having to pass up on the love of his long lost sweetheart, now so miraculously restored to her full health and youthful vitality once again. A quarter of a century ago, he wouldn't have hesitated to have taken Naru up on her offer and make Naru his, for forever and a day. But, years ago, now – sure that the girl he had previously loved with all of his heart and soul was dead and gone forever – the grieving young man had finally managed to put aside his broken heart and move on.

First there had been Su. They had fallen in love with each other way back in the early years of their lonely exile at the hidden oasis, and they still loved each other even now. But Su had reluctantly turned down his marriage proposal to her, even though the act of doing so tore her own huge, brave, generous, faithful heart in two.

The reason for her self-sacrifice was simple. Keitaro wanted children. Su knew that she could never give him any. So, despite her very real feelings for him, after much tearful soul-searching, she had stepped aside to give him the chance to one day achieve his new dream, a real family with children of his own.

It had taken another ten years before Keitaro's longed-for wish had finally, miraculously come true. Keitaro had first rediscovered, fallen in love with, wooed and then finally married the girl whom was now the beloved and cherished mother of his treasured children.

"I know that you've already met her before, a long, long time ago," he continued as the young woman moved forward to stand on Keitaro's right hand side, while Su stepped into her position on his left. "But now, I'd like to introduce you to her as my wife. Naru, meet Nyamo Namo, now - Nyamo Urashima."

"Nyamo – _Urashima…?_ Naru echoed, her stunned tone matching the expression on her white-as-a-sheet face._ "You mean-?!"_

"Urm?_ Eh-heh-heh!_ Yeah…we've been married for just over twelve years now. Believe it or not, I was thirty-four and Nyamo was twenty-eight when we tied the knot. Those are our kids outside – Nyamo's and mine. Well, all save _one_ of th-"

_No…?!_ Naru thought, not hearing the rest of his words, feeling the room beginning to spin dizzily around her as the meaning of that more than merely shocking and unexpected revelation burnt its way into her already confused and over-stimulated mind. She felt faint; her suddenly nerveless legs were beginning to buckle under her weight... Something this bad couldn't possibly be happening to her!

_Keitaro married Nyamo…?!_ _He-he couldn't have – he just couldn't-?! But - but what about me? Oh, Keitaro?! NO!!_

_NONONONONO-!_

"Kei-"

And then her mind shut down and all went black.

-:-:-:-:-:-

_Author's Note:_

_So, you all thought that Keitaro was going to have to choose between Su and Naru, didn't you?_

_Boy, I bet you didn't see THAT one coming!_

_Mind you, if you look carefully, there are a few hints scattered throughout the story that Nyamo was there. And not once did I actually say that Su was Keitaro's wife._

_Nyamo was actually first introduced at the end of Chapter Three – though only by her description, not by her name. I'm surprised that no one picked it up – except for one person who may have suspected it. You know whom you are – so take a bow._

_I know – this story is just begging for one or more chapters, isn't it. Well, you're in luck. Chapter Ten is up right now._

_Rejoice before my munificence!_


	10. Chapter 10

_All right, all right! You talked me into it! Enough readers have requested a continuation, so here it is! _

_I was considering writing an entire __'__Book Two'-type sequel, which explains the loose ends at the end of the last chapter. But as I'm pressed for time, at the moment I'll continue on and finish this particular story off by adding a extra chapter or two - provided that I receive enough positive reviews of this new, extended length chapter to make it worth my while. If not, it's going to have to go temporarily on the back burner while I work on my other stories._

_So, let's roll! _

-:-:-:-:-:-

**LOVE HINA: DOOMSDAY  
**_**CHAPTER TEN**_

By Doctor-T

-:-:-:-:-:-

"_Naru?!"_ Keitaro shouted out in alarm as Naru slumped senseless onto the floor after hearing that she had lost him forever. Hurriedly he crouched down next to her, Su and Nyamo joining him an instant later at the side of the motionless teen. _"Naru! Speak to me!"_

"It's all right, Kei-Baby," Su reassured her concerned friend, after having checked the unconscious girl's pulse and breathing. "Naru's just fainted, that's all. I guess her rescue, the trip back here and then finding out that you and Nyamo are married was just a little too much for her to handle all at once."

"_Poor Naru,"_ Nyamo gasped, fanning a cooling stream of air over the senseless teen's face with her apron in a so far futile effort to revive her. "We have to get her back into her futon, quickly, so that she can recover fully in comfort."

Her deep blue eyes then met the brown, still worried ones of her husband, reading the unspoken concern in them. "Don't worry, Keitaro, Su, I'll stay with her until she comes around again," Nyamo reassured them. "And when she does…I guess that Naru and I have quite a lot to talk about. She's got over a quarter of a century's worth of events to catch up on, after all, hasn't she?"

Keitaro exchanged an uneasy glance with his wife, and then Su. "Yeah…I guess that you're right, Sweetie," he finally agreed. "Come on, Su, let's get her up off the floor. I'll grab her arms, if you can get her legs?"

"Gotcha, stud. I'm onto it." After easily hoisting her share of their unconscious friend up off the floor, Kaolla added, "Okies, let's roll."

-:-:-:-:-:-

As the pair was leaving Naru's replica room after seeing the teen tucked safely into bed, Kaolla shot a speculative glance at the still visibly concerned face of Keitaro. The Molmol woman had an observation she wished to share with him, but she was also understandably wary of reopening old, mostly healed wounds in his heart. But now, with Naru unbelievably back with them after the partial success of their audacious rescue mission, alive once more in all of her youthful beauty and vitality, their situation had unquestionably changed. After hesitating a second more, Su finally came to her decision and spoke what was on her mind.

"Hey, Kei-Baby?"

"Hmmm? Yes, Su?"

"It really looks to me, from what I saw from Naru just before she fainted, that she…really _does_ love you, after all."

"Yeah," Keitaro replied, a wistful expression on his face at having his half-held suspicions confirmed after all of these years. "I think that you're right, Su. She secretly really, really does. _Wow_, eh?" He let out a nervous laugh. "Actually, Naru asking me just before about whether the kids outside were ours got me thinking that very thing, as well. And the look on her face when she fainted just now. _Heh._ That confirmed it to me, all right."

"Yep, me too," Su stated. "Naru always was scared that she'd lose you to another girl, and that's the way it finally worked out. She blew her chance, Kei-Baby, big-time." Then Su momentarily went quiet, and a thoughtful look crossed her still unlined and perfectly smooth face. "Hey, I really wonder what would have happened between you two if the disaster that screwed up our lives hadn't taken place at all, and if Naru had got over her self-doubt and stubbornness enough to finally admit her true feelings for you?"

"If by some miracle that had happened, then I would have made her mine, Su," Keitaro declared, not even a trace of hesitation in his voice, as he looked his dear friend squarely in the eye. "Winning Naru's love, going to Tokyo U with her, and living happily ever after with her as man and wife, that was what I lived for back in the old days. I just…really…really wish that she'd been able to find the courage to tell me how she really felt about me in her heart, twenty five years ago, when I…when she had the chance for her and I to make it work…"

"Yep," Su agreed, laying a gentle hand on his arm. "Truth to tell, even way back then, all of the rest of the girls at the Hinata Apartments knew exactly how Naru really felt, despite her best efforts to cover it up. It was blatantly obvious to everyone that she had fallen for you, Keitaro. But for some reason, Naru could never, ever come out and admit it even to any of us, let alone to you." The tanned beauty then sighed with regret herself as a rush of old memories came flooding back. "And because of Naru's inability to admit to what her true feelings were concerning you to us," she sadly declared, "The rest of us were…well, there were other girls who loved you back then, too, you know. Poor Shinobu did-!"

"Just like you always have loved me, as well, Su," Keitaro just then interrupted her. Coming to a halt, he turned to the sad-faced Molmol beauty and took her hands in his, staring with regret into Su's green, teary eyes as he thought of what could have been between the two of them. "I'm just so sorry that we…you and I… never had any children together. We wanted to, and we both tried for so long, all those years ago, but what the radiation did to you put paid to that idea, didn't it?"

Su shrugged nonchalantly, even though, despite her show of bravery, Keitaro could see fresh tears welling up in her soft eyes.

"Doesn't matter, Keitaro. While I would have loved to have had your natural baby, or babies, I _am_ still a part of your family, and helping to raise your and Nyamo's ones is almost as great. Besides, you're forgetting about the little girl we found washed up in a basket on the southern coast of the island, that time we went there six years ago, remember? And don't forget that I rebuilt Robo-Sarah and then modified her into the android, Sarah-A, Kei-Baby. As you well know, after the conversion, Robo-Sarah's now totally indistinguishable from a real human child. So with those two little miscreants running around underfoot, I _do_ actually have children of my own."

Keitaro smiled gently at his dear friend, thinking back to that long ago day when they had discovered the little dark-haired baby girl bobbing in a floating wickerwork basket in the luckily gentle surf of the ocean beach. "That's right," he affirmed, feeling a bit guilty inside about Su's adopted child having slipped his mind. "She's been a part of our extended family for so long, and she looks so much like our other kids – Nyamo's and mine - I clean forgot that your child was adopted by you," he sheepishly added, by way of explanation.

"You're getting senile in your old age, Kei-Baby," Su chuckled, punching him playfully on the shoulder.

"I'd come up with a smart comeback to that, Su, but I can't remember what you just said," Keitaro joked.

"Heh! Dummy! But you're right, my girl certainly does resemble you and Nyamo's natural kids," the Molmol woman then conceded, rubbing at her chin. "Hmmm. Of course the family resemblance has to be just a coincidence, especially since you hadn't even _had_ sex at all before you and I got together. I seem to remember you telling me that I was definitely your first, on the night when we started our relationship."

"Definitely," Keitaro agreed, a sour look momentarily crossing his face, and not because of his first sexual experience having been with Su, either. That first time with her had been absolutely delightful, and was even now one of the two highlights of his life. "And _thanks a lot_ for reminding me of that," he grumbled, although he couldn't resist a wry smile at the same time. "I was hoping to forget all about my misunderstood former virginal self. You and your blasted photographic memory!"

No, Keitaro's sudden mood swing had been because of Su's comment reminding him of his definitely less-than-successful earlier experiences with girls. His zero luck with the fairer sex had commenced even before he had entered High School. In those now long ago days, he – along with his friends, the original Kimiaki and Masayuki - had been classed as near pariahs by the cooler kids, both male and female. The 'Spec's Patrol' had the reputation – admittedly deserved in some ways - of being the epitome of uncool dorks. _Not_ the ideal moniker to have when you're trying to attract chicks!

So the lonely wannabe had never really dated during his school years, or immediately after graduation from High School, when he had been trying desperately to get into _Toudai_. Because of his clumsiness and total lack of self-confidence back then, his few attempts at wooing girls had inevitably ended in disaster.

And then, after that, there had been the debacle of him living at the Hinata Apartments. Despite being both the landlord and the manager of the sprawling complex – and thereby deserving of at least _some_ respect - he had borne the brunt of Naru's temper and Motoko's sometimes violent dislike of him even being there. This last was a particularly bitter pill for the younger Keitaro to swallow. With Motoko, he didn't even have to do anything wrong, she treated him like dirt just because he was a 'perverted male' – that less-than-complementary phrase being a direct quote from the intolerant kendo girl, herself. So his social life with the most attractive girls boarding at the huge old apartment building was almost as nonexistent as it had been with his female classmates at High School – and a _lot_ more painful!

Still, Keitaro dimly remembered that Motoko had begun to mellow a bit towards him in the months before the nuclear detonation. And if it hadn't been for the horrific disaster irrevocably separating him from the kendo girl, who knows, they might even have eventually become friends?

But this was all decades-old water under the bridge, now. Having been totally hopeless with women before the disaster and his enforced exile at the oasis, Keitaro could by no stretch of the imagination be called 'a ladies man'. In fact, over the entire span of Keitaro's life, he had only ever had real sex with two girls – first, Su, and after her, Nyamo. And that was his sex life in a nutshell.

…Unless you counted a super-realistic erotic dream that he had been having off-and-on for over twenty-five years now. A dream concerning him being in bed with a certain Hinata Apartments resident…

Occasionally during the past two-and-a-half decades, Keitaro had been prone to suddenly waking up in the middle of the hot, tropical night, his sweating body still wracked by imaginary pleasure from his unbidden fantasy. At times like these, the enigmatic dream had seemed so real to Keitaro, he had been half-sure that the whole exceedingly delightful episode could actually be an authentic memory.

But common sense dictated that it just couldn't be. Keitaro was positive that there was _no-way_ he would have possibly forgotten doing it with the beautiful and dangerous teen from his dream if their tryst had indeed happened in the real world. So Keitaro had long since come to the conclusion that his dreamtime escapade must be mere wishful thinking. And the clincher was this – he couldn't really have slept with the teenage resident in question because he was still alive!

"_Yoo-hoo! Keitaaaro?!"_ Su called out to him, waving her right hand in front of his face to snap him back to reality. "You in there?"

"Huh?! Oh…sorry, Su. _Ah-heh-heh!_ I was away with the fairies there for a moment again, wasn't I?"

_Whoops! I was daydreaming again. Now what were we talking about – oh, right?! _

"Anyway, your girl couldn't have asked for a better mother than you, Su, and I say that from the heart," the regretful ex-_ronin_ then declared, shaking off the bitter memories of his loveless and dateless youth and getting back to the topic of their conversation. After all, those lonely days of his youth were well and truly gone, and he now had everything he could ever want for with regards to pleasant female company – namely his beloved wife, Nyamo, dear Su, and now Mutsumi and Naru. "But I still wonder even now just who her real family were, and what happened to them," he added.

"Well, if you're really serious about tracing my little rascal's real folks, I could always do a DNA test on her," Su then suggested, looking thoughtfully back at him. "For some strange reason, I've never really thought about actually trying to trace her ancestry before. But now that my time machine project is largely complete, I've easily got enough spare time to do it, even with me having to go and service the time machine in case we do decide to use it again."

"But if you do the DNA test, just what will it prove?" Keitaro wanted to know. "We still won't know who her real parents are, because we don't have any DNA from any suspects to match hers against."

"Maybe, maybe not," the Molmol woman disagreed, already formulating plans in her head. "At the very least, her DNA will tell us what country she came from, although I already suspect that it was probably Japan, or maybe Okinawa. Once I know this for sure, I can always hack into various police databases and access their DNA samples that they have on file. I can search for a partial match that way. Oh, yeah, and I'll set up my search engine to look up old Pararakelse Island missing persons files that date from around the time that I found her, as well."

"Will all of that take long to do?" Keitaro asked, looking a bit doubtful.

"No, not long," she reassured him. "Not with the new equipment I've now got in my lab. In fact, once we've finished talking here, I'll go and get the DNA analysis started right away. It should only take an hour or so to complete her profile. Once I have that, the Internet search will automatically start scanning all the relevant databases that it can find for any genetic matches-"

"_Um,_ Su?"

"Huh? Yes, Sweetie?"

"Are…are you sure that you actually want to do this?" Keitaro gently asked, knowing full well that even now, Su was still liable to rush into things without giving even a single thought as to the possible consequences. "If her parent or parents are still alive, and you succeed in finding them, then what?" he pointed out to his companion. "Will you be prepared to tell your girl that her real family is still alive? And if she wants to leave the oasis to go and meet them, or even live with them, would you – or even _could_ you - give her up?"

"I…don't know, Keitaro," Su finally answered, her eyes watering with tears again at the truth of his words. "But if her family really is still out there, think of how they must feel at losing her. And my girl – I couldn't keep something like that from her, could I? She deserves to know the truth of who her real parents are, doesn't she…?"

Keitaro stepped forward and took the now sobbing woman into his arms. Su clutched him tightly against her, feeling once again the warmth and security of the only man that she had ever loved.

"Just hold me, Kei-Baby," she sniffed, burying her tear-splashed face into his right shoulder. "Please – just hold me…?"

-:-:-:-:-:-

Despite her mental anguish at what she might discover about her treasured child's past, Su was as good as her word. As soon as the still slightly depressed genius made it back to her laboratory, she retrieved an already stored reference sample of her elementary-school-aged, adopted daughter's DNA – which was nothing more sinister than some loose hairs and a few flakes of dry skin - from the lab's refrigerated storage compartment. Then, after only a moment's hesitation, she set to work.

After the automatic sequence for Y-chromosome analysis of the sample had commenced - which, since Y-chromosomes are paternally inherited, would help in the identification of her daughter's natural father - the still moody Molmol woman sat down on her comfortable chair to contemplate her next task.

The second, different test that Su was planning on doing was a Mitochondrial analysis of another reference sample from her child, to try to determine the identity of her real mother, this time, since mtDNA is maternally inherited. However, Su knew that there was no real rush to finish her work here. So she decided to carry out the second DNA test after her first set of results had come in, and she had started up an Internet trace on them.

Her mind made up, Kaolla suddenly felt the need for a break. So she departed her laboratory once again, intending to check on the hopefully now conscious Naru, or if she was still out cold, relieve Nyamo from her vigil for a while.

-:-:-:-:-:-

After knocking on the sliding door and then entering the exact replica of Naru's long gone room at the vaporized Hinata Apartments, Su discovered that Naru still hadn't recovered from her faint. But it wasn't long after Nyamo had departed the room and the youthful Molmol woman had pulled up a chair next to Naru's futon, that the comatose girl at long last began to stir.

Naru opened her eyes, and then rapidly blinked a couple of times as she forced her mind to begin working properly again.

_What in the hell…? That was some horrible dream that I just had,_ she told herself with a grimace, eyes staring sleepily up at her familiar ceiling. _I dreamed that the Hinata Apartments had been destroyed, I was in the future, and that Keitaro was actually married to Nyamo! Heh, heh! As if?!_

_Still, it seemed so real that-"WHAOW?!"_

"Wakey, wakey, Naru-yan," Su greeted the huge-eyed, startled teen, Naru having just that second noticed her seated visitor. "That was some sleep you just had."

"_Who the-Su?!_ What are you doing in my room, and…_oh? Oh, shit!_ You're the older Su, aren't you? Bu-but, that means…?"

"Yup. Sorry, Naru, it wasn't a dream. All that you went through really happened to you."

"Oh…damn. Then…then that also means that Keitaro is…really, truly married to - to Nyamo, then, doesn't it?"

"Yup for that, too. 'Fraid so, Sweetie. You and I, we both blew it."

Naru clenched her fists in a gesture of helpless futility as once more her vision blurred with involuntarily tears at her loss.

"Oh, god! I've really, really lost him…! And my home and some of my friends, as well! What – what am I going to do…?"

"But at least you're now alive," Su consoled the sobbing girl. "You _were_ actually dead before, remember? That is until we rescued you from the Hinata Apartments _before_ you died and brought you back to 2027 with us. So that's something for you to be grateful about, isn't it?"

Naru sniffed loudly again, Su's truthful words distracting her shocked mind from its quite understandable soul-deep grief.

"Yes, yes, you're right, Su," she conceded, wiping angrily at her wet cheeks with her duvet cover. "Even though I don't look it at the moment, I am happy about that, at least…"

"Good, Naru, good," the Molmol beauty encouraged her friend. "And you're not alone here at all. Keitaro's here, I'm here, Mutsumi's here, and so is Tama-chan. So what if Keitaro married Nyamo? We're still with him, aren't we? It's not like we'll never, ever see him again, is it?"

"I…guess you're right, Su," Naru replied, forcing herself with an effort to pull herself together. "I'm just being selfish, aren't I? And it's my fault that Keitaro and I never got together, even though he…and I…wanted to. I admit that. But I never thought that he'd end up marrying Nyamo, of all people."

"Life throws us some real curve balls at times, doesn't it?" Su pointed out, smiling down at her dishevelled friend. "Look at me, for instance. Keitaro actually _asked_ me to marry him, and I stupidly turned him down. I _wasn't_ selfish, and look where it got me? I lost him forever, too."

Naru bit her lip at being reminded that her once younger, but miraculously now much older friend had experienced what she now never could have with the man she loved.

"So, Su…since you aren't married to Keitaro, like I thought you were when I first heard from you and him what had happened, what – _um_ – what exactly _is_ your position here with him and Nyamo, now," she tentatively inquired. "If you don't mind me asking you that personal question, of course?"

"Nah, I don't mind. Actually I'm just good old Keitaro's concubine now," Su remarked with a straight face. "I'm rostered on to give Kei-Baby some extra loving three times a week, on Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday nights. So my position is usually _the 'Missionary' _one."

"_Whaaat?!"_

"_Nyahahaha!_ Relax, Naru, I'm just kiddin' ya. It's really Monday, Wednesday and Saturday, and I kneel in front of him!"

"_Suuu! Be serious!"_ Naru wailed, blushing furiously at the picture in her head of the beautiful Molmol woman and the man that she had lost through her own stupidity getting it on together.

"Okies, but it's nothing like that at all, so like I just said, relax," Su giggled, wiping the tears of mirth from her eyes. "I wish what I just told you _was_ true, but it's not, darn it!"

"Hmmph!" Naru snorted, the perturbed blush still on her cheeks.

"Okies, truth to tell, I'm classed as a full member of Keitaro's family, and neither he, nor Nyamo, will hear any different from anybody," Kaolla then explained. "I helped raise their kids, I'm their main teacher, and I'm in charge of all the repairs and modifications that are needed to keep this place running smoothly."

"But you and Keitaro, when you first arrived here, before Nyamo showed up, well – _um?_ Well, what happened then?" Naru pressed her now grown up friend. "How long did…did it take before anything happened between the two of you, like – _'ahem!'_- like dating each other and stuff like that? Please stop me if you think that I'm being too personal, Su."

"You really wanna know, Naru? Well, I'm not going to deny it to you because it happened, but, _yup,_ Kei-Baby and I, we _did _have a good thing going for a number of years after we crash-landed at the oasis and decided to stay here. And to answer your question – not long at all."

"Our lives were great back then, Naru, for both of us! We had a tropical climate with a warm lake to play in, shelter when it got too windy or too rainy – which was rare - plenty of different types of food, _bananas!_ All of the fresh water that we could ever need, and best of all, after the shock of what had happened to you guys and Hinata Hot Springs had faded a bit, we were happy!"

As she reflected back on those more than fond memories, a wistful look appeared in the Molmol woman's crystal-clear green eyes, and she let out a sigh.

"Yup, those were the days. Even though we were fully occupied with modifying the caves inside the mesa into our new home, there was no rush to get the job done. We had the rest of our long lives to finish doing it, so time didn't matter to us. Not in the slightest. So there was always plenty of spare time for us to just relax in the sun, explore the oasis, or play in the lake."

"But weren't you ever lonely, Su," Naru asked in wonderment, her eyes far away as she tried to visualize the idyllic life that her friend had experienced after their crash landing. And she couldn't help fervently wishing that it had been _her_ there with Keitaro, instead of Su. "I mean, with only you and Keitaro here at the oasis?"

"Sometimes," she admitted. "But I was in love with Keitaro, we had Tama-chan with us, as well, and I could always secretly contact my friends in Molmol if I needed to talk to other people. So things were never too bad for me here."

Su paused for a moment and stared at Naru, wondering if she should then bring up what was on her mind.

"Before you ask your next question, the answer is…yes, I did," Su finally declared, looking Naru right in the eye. "I started sleeping with Keitaro the night we first arrived here, although it was only for comfort and company at first. We were both in a really bad way for the first week or so, what with our injuries and all. But, after we both had fully recovered from our burns, it didn't take long for us to…progress our relationship to the next level."

Upon hearing Su freely confess to having slept with the man that she loved, Naru shuddered, and momentarily closed her eyes as soul-deep pain closed its cold fist around her broken heart yet again.

"But we both thought that you were dead, Naru," Su quickly pointed out to the teary-eyed teen, not failing to notice just how close her long-lost friend was to having yet another breakdown. _"And you actually were at the time_. If there had been any chance at all that you were still alive, Keitaro and I would have moved heaven and earth back then to rescue you and bring you to Pararakelse Island to live with us. And Keitaro never would have done what he did with me, had you still been alive at the time. I know this, and so do you."

"Y-yes, you're right, Su," Naru sniffed, wiping the tears from her red eyes with her right sleeve this time, rather than her already soggy duvet cover. "I believe you. I'm sorry. I realize that to you, your relationship with Keitaro is now all ancient history, but to me…well, it's hard for me to hear this. Please understand, less than two hours ago, my time, I was back in 2002, planning on confessing my love to Keitaro in my room that very night! And now I find out, without any warning whatsoever, that my old life is gone forever, the Hinata Apartments have been destroyed, he's married to Nyamo, and that you have had him, too_ - 'Sniff!' _I – I'm all alone, now._ I have nobody to love me! Waaaaahh!"_

Kaolla quickly knelt down at Naru's side. She took her crying friend tightly in her arms, and held her until the distressed and regretful girl had cried it all out once more.

"Th-thank you, Su," Naru sniffled, after managing to compose herself once again. "So…why _didn't_ you marry Keitaro, instead of Nyamo doing it? I mean…if you were both so happy together, and all…?"

"I wanted to Naru, believe me. We had been…trying for a baby for a couple of years, but I couldn't seem to get pregnant for some reason. At about that time I finally got my new lab up and running, and after taking a few tests I soon found out what my problem was."

Su then took another deep breath, and her own eyes filled with tears. "Like Keitaro told you earlier, I can never have natural children of my own," she whispered, her voice almost breaking at her loss. "Because of my proximity to my nuclear reactor when the breach occurred, the radiation saw to that…"

This time it was Naru who clutched the older Su tightly in her arms, as the Molmol woman continued with her heartbreaking personal tale.

"Well, after that, as you already know, Keitaro _did_ ask me to marry him. But even though it broke my own heart to do so, I…turned him down. And I've already told you why - I knew just how much he wanted to have children, and…and if he was to be married to me, then that would never happen."

"Anyway, I explained to him my reason for declining his proposal even though I desperately wanted to accept it. Good old Keitaro, while I could tell he was upset that I had turned him down, even though he tried hard to keep the smile on his face, still understood and accepted my decision. We continued on with sharing a bed afterwards, too, exactly as we had done before. That bit didn't change. Not long after that, Nyamo and Gidget showed up here, and – well, you know the rest, I guess."

"So you put aside your own love for Keitaro, and stepped aside to let him realize his wish to have a family," Naru stated, her eyes moistening with emotion again. "That's so…selfless of you, Su. I doubt that I could have been so self-sacrificing with him if I had been the one in your place."

_Like I should have been the one in your place! Oh, Keitaro…!_

"Yep, I was. And at times I still kick myself for doing it. I know that you don't want to hear me say this, Naru, but I do still love him even after all of these years, just as you do."

Su then put a brave expression on her face as she continued with her tale. "But things are still great for me here," she told the younger girl in a cheery tone. "As I told ya, I'm a valued, adopted part of the Urashima family, I get to hang out with Kei-Baby every day, and I love playing with all of his and Nyamo's kids. And while I do regret not being his wife, I wouldn't live anywhere else but here and with them for the world."

"Oh, and the bit about me not having a kid isn't strictly true, either," Su then added, a touch of pride entering her voice. "Believe it or not, Naru, I found a castaway baby girl a few years back, and since there was no trace of her parent or parents, I ended up adopting her. And I also built myself an enhanced and much more advanced version of Robo-Sarah, who you really can't tell isn't the real Sarah McDougal at ten years of age – well, except that this new one doesn't bean good ol' Kei-baby over the head with priceless artifacts any more! So, counting her, I guess that I do have a couple of kids of my own after all, eh?"

"I – I guess," Naru responded, somewhat caught out by her older friend's surprising tale. "But I'm glad for you, Su, I really am."

"Now, if I had only married Kei-Baby when I had the chance, we would have had kids, after all. Not his own natural ones, but still, we would have been a real family…"

_Yeah, same here,_ Naru thought, the sudden surge of raw emotion inside of her at Su's regretful words causing her eyes to begin watering once more. _Well, when I had the chance to ask Keitaro to be mine, I mean._ _God, I was such a fool!_

"Its funny how the saddest words in any language are always, _'If only,'_ isn't it, Naru?" Su sniffled.

"I…I think it's time that we changed the subject, now," the upset teen declared firmly in answer, both her and Su now sporting matching streams of tears trickling down their cheeks because of their unfulfilled longing for the man that they had both loved and lost. Then, as the slightly embarrassed teen looked morbidly around at her surroundings, she realized that she had a ready-made topic to discuss, right there in front of her.

"Hey, Su, tell me about my room here! It's absolutely amazing how similar it is to my old one back at the apartments! How did you get it to be so alike to the original?"

Before Su could reply, a _'knock-knock'_ came from the door, and then Keitaro, himself, entered, a cheerful smile on his face at finding the two of them still together.

"Hey, guys," he greeted them, and then paused momentarily to turn back and slide the door closed behind him again. "I've just finished taking Mutsumi to decontamination, and then showing her to her new room. Mutsumi took the news of what has happened and where she is now surprisingly well, too. She'll be in here to see you both in a minute. So, what did I miss?"

At that very second, Keitaro noticed that both of his ex-loves were sporting reddened eyes and wet cheeks, which they were hurriedly trying to wipe dry with the sleeves of their tops.

"Hey, have the two of you been crying?" he asked in a concerned tone. "What's wrong now-?"

Rising up from her futon without a word, Naru flung herself into the startled Keitaro's arms, cutting off his worried query. "Oh, Keitaro, I'm _so, so sorry_ for what I did to you back at the Hinata Apartments this morning, before all of this crap happened to us," she cried out, squeezing him so tightly that he felt his back click under the pressure. "I was so wrong to do everything I ever did to hurt you! I love you so much, and now I can never have you!" Then Naru burst into long, tearing sobs of regret again as she finally released her pent up feelings for the man that could and should have been hers, had she not let her fear of commitment and stubborn self-denial of her love for Keitaro cause her to treat him so cruelly.

Keitaro didn't have a clue as what best to say, so wisely he kept his mouth shut. Instead of words, the youthful looking man instinctively did the best possible thing under the circumstances by merely standing in place and hugging the distraught girl tightly against his chest, using his now mature and strong presence alone to comfort his long-lost love.

"I'm sorry, Naru," he whispered to her once her sobbing had calmed down to only a few erratic sniffles. "I know all too well what a huge shock this must be to you. Apart from the time travelling bit, and the fact that I was half burnt to a crisp when Su and I first escaped to here, I went through exactly what you're going through now. With regards to losing my home, most of my friends and the future that I thought I would have with you, I mean."

"But," he then emphasized, "You have it better than I did, because when I arrived here with Su, we thought that you and all of our other friends back at the apartments were dead. And most of you _were_. But now, you're alive and here with me in a place of comfort and safety. We also know that most if not all of our dear friends back in 2002 have survived as well. So, even though I'm married now and we can't have the relationship we could have had, at least you and I, against all odds, have been reunited again. And for that miracle, I, for one, am eternally thankful."

Naru managed a nod. "You're right, Keitaro. _'Sniff'_. And I am so grateful that you and Su came back for me. _'Sniff'_." Then a weak smile momentarily appeared on her damp face, and she added, "I…I think I'm going to be all right now, thank you."

Su quickly stepped forward with a box of tissues, to help Naru dry her eyes, blow her petite nose and wipe her wet cheeks. Then the Molmol woman and Keitaro led their friend over to the nearest chair and seated her on it, although Su still clutched Naru's right hand for moral support.

"I'm sorry, guys," Naru finally said, forcing herself to look upwards at Keitaro's much more relaxed face, his kind brown eyes looking confidently back down into hers. "I just…lost control for a moment there, that's all. I didn't mean to be a bother."

"Don't worry about it, Naru. We understand," the new Keitaro replied, giving her a smile of his own. "And don't worry about fitting in around here. We've got plenty of room. And Su, Nyamo and I, we'll all do our best to help you and Mutsumi settle down into your new lives here. Provided that you both decide that you want to stay here with us, that is?"

"I can't speak for Mutsumi, but I'll definitely stay," Naru immediately replied, in a much stronger voice. "Hey, where is Mutsumi, anyway, Keitaro? When you arrived, I thought that you said she wasn't too far behind you?"

"She wasn't," Keitaro confirmed, turning to face the door to Naru's room, a puzzled look in his eyes. "Maybe she stopped for a chat with Nyamo on the way up, or something?"

"Hey, while we're waiting for her, Kei-Baby, how about telling Naru all about how we managed to replicate an exact copy of her old room at the Hinata Apartments," Su suggested. "I was about to do it myself when you showed up."

"Yes, please do, Keitaro," Naru prompted him, sudden interest showing in her eyes. "Even my personal stuff that I can see in here looks to be exactly the same as I owned back in my old room! I'd love to know how you two pulled it off."

Knowing that for him to do so would momentarily distract his reincarnated teen admirer from brooding on her radically changed circumstances, Keitaro readily acquiesced to the request.

"Ah, sure. Well, reconstructing your room was a job in itself – not to mention getting exact or almost exact copies of everything inside it," he began. "In explanation, I lucked out by having my digital camera with me when we escaped, and it had hundreds of photos in its luckily undamaged memory. A lot of them were taken in various rooms of the apartments – including your own. So we worked out the exact dimensions of your old room and the location of everything inside it by using them as templates."

"However, Su has to take most of the credit for the furnishings in here. Her photographic memory came in really handy, especially when it came to ordering the books for your bookshelves, and even the clothes in your dresser drawers. She remembered the brand names, you see, and since we knew your size, we were able to order them from department stores back in Japan. Then we had them shipped out to Molmol, and secretly parachuted by Su's trusted friends down to the oasis."

"That's…_unbelievable,"_ Naru gasped out. "And you two did all of this for _me?_ But why, if you thought that I had died?"

"When Su told me fifteen years ago about her plan to build a time machine capable of travelling back to 2002 and saving you and our other friends, I knew straight away that if anyone could pull it off, she was the one," Keitaro declared, grinning at his Molmol co-conspirator and receiving a matching grin in return. "After seeing Su's _mecha-tamago_ get caught in the atomic blast that destroyed the Hinata Apartments, and after that, _still_ manage to cross the Pacific Ocean to here, I had great faith in her scientific abilities, even way back then. So we rebuilt your room in anticipation of your return, so if – no, _when_ – you were rescued, you would at least have the familiar surroundings of your bedroom from your old life to comfort you."

"And we did the same for the rooms of all of the other residents at the apartments, as well," Kaolla added. "So that whoever else we managed to rescue with you would also feel more at home here. The whole job of duplicating everyone's rooms took us several years to complete, but for you and our other friends, it was worth it."

"_Oh, you guys!"_ Naru joyously exclaimed, reaching upwards with her arms to embrace the smiling older Su. "Thank you! Thank you so much!"

Before any more could be said, Nyamo entered the room, followed by the smiling Mutsumi. At the sight of the turtle girl, the suddenly overjoyed Naru immediately flew up from her seat to tightly hug her dear friend.

After the pleasantries were finally over and Mutsumi and Naru had untangled themselves, the turtle girl turned to address her grinning audience. For she had some good news to relay on to her rescuers, having just found out during her talk with Nyamo that the fate of a certain young member of the Hinata Apartments crew was still unknown to them.

"Don't worry about Shinobu-san, everyone," Mutsumi reassured her friends, bringing all eyes back to her in a hurry. "I've just remembered something important. _Um_, what was it again…? Oh, yes! At ten o'clock this morning…well, I guess that it was this morning twenty-five years ago, now, wasn't it?- Shinobu-san stopped by the Tea Rooms on her way out, along with her mother, for a quick visit and a cup of tea. Or was it coffee? Anyway, Shinobu's mother had showed up unexpectedly, you see, and invited her out for the day. If I remember correctly, they were both going to catch the eleven o'clock train to Yokohama, for a days shopping."

"_Wha-wha?!"_ Keitaro gobbled, a dumbfounded expression appearing as if by magic on his now slack-jawed face at that bit of heart-soaring news. "S-so you're telling us that-?!"

"_Fu, fu._ Yes. So when the atomic bomb went off, Shinobu-san was at least an hours train ride away from Hinata Hot Springs. I'd say that she's perfectly all right, wouldn't you?"

Keitaro's, _"Yeehah!!"_ was nearly drowned out by Su's, _"Yaaay!!"_ as the pair swung each other around and around by their arms in elation. Then they both pounced on Mutsumi and did the same to her, before planting two big, wet, soppy kisses onto her blushing cheeks!

"_Oh, my?"_ the turtle lady gasped out happily, eagerly joining in the three-way hug. "After experiencing this reaction from the two of you, I hope that I have more good news to tell you every day from now on. _Fu, fu, fu!"_

"_Thank goodness?!"_ Naru breathed out, her eyes shining with joy at Shinobu's survival as well, despite her feeling just a smidgen of jealousy at Su and Mutsumi because of their easy, carefree bond with Keitaro, which she had never had.

_And is it any wonder?_ She silently berated herself. _If Keitaro had ever tried to do anything like that kiss with me back at the apartments, for any reason, I would have lost it and put him through the wall. Fuck, I was so dumb! I just wish that you could be that happy and relaxed with me, right now, Keitaro…?_

"Oh, by the way, Su, Sarah's just arrived back with the supplies from town," Nyamo then told her co-mother, the gorgeous Pararakelse woman not at all concerned by the intimate horseplay between Keitaro, Su and Mutsumi. "She wanted me to tell you that she didn't have any trouble re-crossing the desert this time, either. That new _mecha-tamago _bulk transport thing you built for getting the stuff we need from town worked a treat."

"Oh, thanks, Nyamo!" Kaolla exclaimed, jumping up to her feet at the welcome news. "Excuse me, guys, I'd better get down there and give Sarah and Nyamo a hand with unloading and bringing all of our goodies in," she apologized to her long-lost friends, looking with excitement back and forth between Naru and Mutsumi. "We can all talk a bit later, okies?"

"Wait for me, Nyamo, Su, I'll come with you," Keitaro declared, offering his services for the heavy lifting as well. He directed his next words to Naru and Mutsumi. "That'll give you two some private time to catch up. I'm sure that you both have a _lot_ to talk about and deal with, right about now?"

"Sure, Keitaro, I – _we_ do. But are you positive that you don't need a hand with the lifting, Su, Nyamo?" Naru asked, the smiling Mutsumi raising her right hand and nodding concurrence at her side. "I mean, it'll be no trouble for us to-"

"Nah, you guys relax," Su waved them off, as she and Nyamo turned for the door, Keitaro right behind them. "With Kei-Baby helping us, it'll be a breeze! See ya later!"

Once the sliding door had closed behind the departing trio, Keitaro and Nyamo leaving hand-in-hand, Naru stared in the direction that they had gone for a second or two more, before turning back to Mutsumi, whose face right then lost its smile for once.

"God, I wish that was me instead of Nyamo, Mutsumi," she told the turtle girl, her tone edgy and subdued. "I would give anything to be in her place, right now. _Anything."_

"I'm sorry, Naru-san," Mutsumi replied, laying her right hand on the forlorn teen's near shoulder. "Who could have possibly known that our lives were going to turn out like this? But at least we both survived, thanks to Kei-kun and Su-san. And Tama-chan, in my case! _Fu, fu, fu. _So cheer up, and just try to make the best of it from now on. That's what I'm going to do."

Naru sighed. "I…guess that you're right, Mutsumi. I've lost Keitaro, and now I've just got to learn to live with it. Oh, and please just call me 'Naru', okay?"

Mutsumi regained her usual smile. "Sure, Naru-san. I just want to see you happy again."

"I'll try to be, really," Naru promised, moodily caressing her forehead as if she had a headache at the turtle girl's continual use of the honorific. "But that task would be a lot easier if I only knew for sure what happened to our other friends back at the Hinata Apartments. Keitaro and Su claim that Kitsune and the others survived, but did they really? There's always that element of doubt, you know? _They were caught up in a god-damned nuclear explosion, for Christ's sake?!"_

At that very second, to Naru's wide-eyed surprise, Mutsumi suddenly leaned forward and kissed her tenderly on her lips, embracing the startled teen tightly against her amply endowed chest.

"Don't worry, Naru-san," the turtle lady gently reassured her taken aback, unsure looking friend. "I am sure that Kitsune-san and Motoko-san and Kanako-san are all fine. Nyamo-san informed me earlier when I talked to her downstairs that Kei-kun and Su-san are seriously considering travelling back to 2002, just to make sure they really _are_ all okay. Maybe the other girls will even want to come back with them to live here with us in the future? And if anyone can successfully find them and bring them back, we both know that Su-san is the one."

"Let's hope so, Mutsumi. And it's just 'Naru', remember," Naru sighed, just then realizing that she was feeling a strange sense of comfort in being held in the friendly older girl's arms. She already knew that Mutsumi liked to kiss people she knew, both male _and_ female, so the turtle girl's behavior wasn't really out of the ordinary.

On a sudden impulse, Naru leaned forward herself, instinctively resting her head on the willing right shoulder of the turtle girl, her only unchanged link back to her previous life in the long gone world that she had lost forever. "And, Mutsumi…I'm _really, really_ glad that you're here with me, right now. Could you just…hold me for a while?"

"Sure, Naru-san. And I am happy that you are here, too, Naru-san," Mutsumi admitted as they clutched each other tight, both drawing badly needed reassurance from the other's familiar presence. _"Really, really happy."_

-:-:-:-:-:-

Half an hour after the transport _mecha-tamago_ had been unloaded and parked back into its underground garage, Keitaro was just finishing off the hot meal that his wife had prepared for him, when Su's oldest 'daughter', the Sarah-android, arrived in the dining room with a message for him.

Sarah-A looked to be about ten years old, but in reality, she had been around, in one form or another, for the last fifteen years. With her incredibly life-like hair, eyelashes, crystal-clear blue eyes and soft, warm, seamless synthetic skin that felt real to the touch, the artificial girl looked so much like the original, blonde-haired American pre-teen that she had been modelled on; everyone living at the oasis usually didn't even remember that she wasn't in fact the real deal.

And it wasn't just because Sarah looked exactly like her ten-year-old namesake had done, twenty-five years ago, which caused the other inhabitants of the hidden oasis to automatically think that she was fully human. Quite apart from just her physical appearance, Sarah-A also acted just like a real ten-year-old girl, playing with Keitaro and Nyamo's children and her own adopted sister like any ordinary girl would do. She had the full and complete range of human facial and voice expressions, and even learned new things at the same pace as a normal child did. On top of those human characteristics, Sarah-A ate, drank and slept just like everyone else there did, as well. In short, she was human in all but the material her body was comprised of.

And as to how the Sarah android even existed, she was yet another example of Su's creative genius. Before Sarah-A, her original and much simpler earlier form, Robo-Sarah, had been hanging around with Keitaro and Su at the oasis ever since Su had rebuilt her, which had happened almost fifteen years ago, now. Over the years since then, the Molmol woman had been steadily modifying and upgrading her impish robot creation, as and when she had found the time, making the Sarah-bot progressively more and more human with each improvement, in not only physical appearance, but also in mannerisms and personality.

Five years ago, Robo-Sarah had become indistinguishable from the original, long vanished Sarah in every conceivable way – well, except for the android version's lack of the original girl's mischief-making and harassment of Keitaro, of course. To celebrate the auspicious event, Robo-Sarah had been renamed Sarah-A – usually shortened to just 'Sarah' - by her proud 'mother'.

But there was one further thing about the Sarah android that blurred the line between natural and artificial so much that Keitaro could scarcely believe it even now. A couple of years ago, Su had carried out one more modification to her artificial child. Keitaro had no idea just how Su had managed to do this, but Sarah-A was actually now physically growing in size, at exactly the same rate as a normal human child did.

All Keitaro did know about the esoteric process was that Sarah-A's constant growth into maturity had something to do with nanotechnology. Apparently, microscopic nano-robots inside Sarah-A were engaged in molecular assembly of her body when she powered down every night in the robot approximation of human sleep, utilizing some of the food and drink that she had eaten as the raw material for their labors, the rest being used as fuel for the tiny fusion reactor that powered her.

The end result of the nano-bots endeavors was that every morning at dawn, Sarah-A was a tiny fraction larger and more grown up than she had been the previous day. Furthermore, once Sarah-A reached the age of twenty-one, these nano-bots would automatically switch off building her, leaving, for all intents and purposes, an adult copy of the real, still much missed Sarah McDougal.

Because of this built-in, self repair system; this version of Sarah would never physically grow any older after she had reached that age. Being artificial, and with the patiently waiting nano-robots inside of her to repair any damage, she could theoretically live as a young woman forever – just like her 'mother' and 'father' could.

Su had ensured that her beloved oldest daughter, the artificial copy of her best friend, would never, ever naturally die and leave her, no matter how much time were to pass.

"Yo, dork – er, _Dad_, I mean. Momma wants you to drop everything and come down to the lab, ASAP," the mirror image of the blonde, previous bane of his existence requested of Keitaro, interrupting his thoughts as she placed the ugly, antique stone mask that she usually carried around with her down on the table next to him. This monstrosity of a mask was a story in itself – being an exact copy of the one that the real Sarah McDougal had always been equipped with, and it still made Keitaro nervous to see the long-gone girl's weapon of choice up close and personal. Luckily for him, the Sarah copy never showed any inclination to bean him with it, unlike the original girl had done on multiple occasions, and with relish.

"Ah – okay, Sarah. I'll be right down, after I've finished up here," Keitaro responded, a slight frown crossing his brow. "Hey! I thought that Su had finally gotten rid of that old 'dork' data on that checkup she gave you last week. So why's it still there?"

"Whoops! Sorry about the uncomplimentary nickname, Dad. It still seems to come out automatically," the contrite copy quickly apologized, a very human-like woebegone look in her blue eyes at her _faux pas_. "Momma did try to erase that saying again, but it almost seems like it's permanently stored in firmware somewhere inside me?"

Keitaro nodded, twisting his lips with resignation. He wished that Su could finally eliminate that particular programmed insult from the Sarah android's open-ended artificial intelligence program, which was based on a copy of the original Robo-Sarah's software, but now enhanced to the _nth_ degree by Su's genius. Sometime prior to Keitaro and Su escaping the nuclear blast, twenty-five years ago, Kaolla had fortuitously stored a copy of this particularly dangerous and annoying little robot's data in their getaway _mecha-tamago's_ memory banks. This software program had been invaluable in resurrecting the rebuilt Robo-Sarah's original personality.

Luckily for Keitaro's health and peace of mind, Kaolla had removed the worst parts of the original program before reinstalling it into the Robo-Sarah copy and activating it. But, despite the Molmol woman's best efforts over the years, even now partial traces of the first Robo-Sarah's previous bad behavior still remained in Sarah-A – the 'dork' insult being a prime example of this.

"Okay, fair enough," he conceded. "It's not your fault, Sarah. Hey, have you eaten since you got back from town, yet?"

"No, Dad, I'm just about to get something now. Nyamo-Momma saved some lunch for me in the re-heater."

"Good." Keitaro pushed back his chair and stood up, having just finished the last of the hot food in his bowl. "I'd best see what Su wants, right now. See ya."

-:-:-:-:-:-

A couple of minutes later, the thoughtful ex-_ronin_ strode into Su's laboratory, his jumbled thoughts still focussed on the memorable events of earlier that day – specifically, the rescue of both Naru and Mutsumi. However, once inside the sizeable scientific complex, it didn't take long for Su's loud voice to pull him back to reality.

"Keitaro! Keitaro!" Su had just noticed her partner come in, and was beckoning frantically to him with her right hand.

"Right here, Su," Keitaro called back cheerfully, raising his own right hand in greeting whilst walking over to where she was tensely standing. "So, what was it that you wanted to see me about? From what Sarah told me, it sounded urgent?"

"Boy have I got some news for you," the Molmol woman countered, her words coming out in a rush. "I've just got the results of my younger girl's DNA test back. And I've…I've just found out who her real father is! So you'd best take a seat, you're gonna need it."

"You have? That was quick," Keitaro replied, a look of surprise transforming his already happy expression as he pulled up a stool and did as she requested. "So, who is he…?" Then his voice trailed off into an uncertain silence as he noticed the look that the ashen-faced Molmol woman was giving him.

"Wh-what? _What?"_ he finally inquired, not sure what was wrong yet, but having an uncomfortable suspicion that what Su was about to tell him was going to be bad. "Oh, no?! I hope that it's not bad news for you?"

"No, I wouldn't exactly say that," the trembling Su told him. "Quite the contrary, in fact…"

"Well, don't keep me in suspense," Keitaro prompted her, shifting in his seat and feeling most uncomfortable at the expression on Su's face as she eyed him up. "So, who is, or was, her father?"

Su opened her mouth, closed it again, and then finally spoke up in a whisper of shocked amazement.

"You aren't gonna believe this, Kei-Baby. _I_ don't believe this! But it's…_it's you."_

-:-:-:-:-:-

Just before dinner that evening, up on the stone balcony that surrounded the top of his towering mesa home, one very pumped up, confused and stressed Keitaro was taking time out to try to relax and unwind a little from his hectically memorable day.

_And if anyone ever deserved a little time out,_ Keitaro told himself as he settled down into his comfortable swivel seat next to the safety rail, _I'm definitely the one!_

For today, on top of the heady excitement of their time travel rescue mission of Naru and Mutsumi, he was now trying to come to terms with the fact he had, by some miracle, unknowingly fathered another child. A child that _couldn't possibly_ be his - yet was.

But how could it even have come about?! Since fleeing Japan with Su, he had lived his entire life hidden away in the middle of the Desert of Death, never even leaving the sanctuary of the verdant oasis until the trip to the south coast of Pararakelse Island, where they had found the girl who had now turned out to be his mystery daughter. The baffled new father hadn't even encountered any other women, save Nyamo, in all of that time. So how on earth could he have gotten another woman pregnant in the first place?!

Which brought up another point. Upon reflection, the morose Keitaro could only remember ever having done the deed with two girls in his entire life – Su and Nyamo. And neither of them was the mother of this mystery girl. That much was blatantly obvious.

Thirdly, even if he _had_ cheated on his wife and couldn't remember it for some bizarre reason, the age of the girl he had supposedly – no, _definitely_ – fathered, didn't fit into the correct time frame. For he had already been married to Nyamo for a number of years at the time the girl must have been conceived. And, since Nyamo and Su had been the only two women here with him at the hidden oasis since his wedding, it didn't take a genius to work out just what was wrong with this picture.

But the proof of his paternity that Su had presented him with in her lab had been irrefutable. Impossible though it was, Keitaro was indeed the father of a child that he had never even suspected existed, and his head still spun just from thinking about it.

_It's true. There is an exact genetic match. I am her real father!_

As yet, the only other person Keitaro had told of Su's startling discovery was his wife, Nyamo. And it was definitely going to stay that way, too, for a goodly while at least. As to the reason for the secrecy, Keitaro couldn't help having a sneaking suspicion that making any mention of his previously unsuspected love child to the newly arrived Naru, in particular, would quite possibly be suicide for him at her hands. Even though Naru now professed to love him, and Keitaro was absolutely sure now that she actually did, he also knew from painful past experience that the beautiful brunette teen not only possessed a fiery temper, but she was also prone to reacting instinctively and violently to any supposed transgressions by him, rather than thinking things through.

So, Naru, upon hearing of his supposed infidelity, would be sure to say something like, _'Up to your old tricks again, I see?! You pervert!!'_ then proceed to punch him clean through the rock wall of the mesa and down into the lake.

_But that was then, and this is now_, Keitaro reminded himself, chin in his hands and elbows on the railing as he leaned forward to stare off over the shadow-streaked, darkening oasis below his perch. _I'm forty-six years old now, and I've just saved Naru's life._ _Would she even dare to react that way towards me, under these new circumstances?_

Okay, so maybe he was misjudging her. But old habits die hard. And so did Keitaro's memories of the beatings he had suffered at Naru's hands back at the long-gone Hinata Apartments…

Luckily for Keitaro's peace of mind and guilt-stricken conscience, Nyamo had taken the news very well. While somewhat shocked and surprised after hearing of his discovery, his Pararakelse wife had immediately accepted that her understandably sweating husband really _hadn't_ cheated on her after they had been married. Nyamo had no clue as to how this could have happened, either, but she was sure that Keitaro was innocent of any wrongdoing of her and their marriage vows. One look into his pleading eyes was more than enough to convince her of that. After all, Keitaro had always been scrupulously honest and faithful to her and to their family. And even if, by some total character reversal, Keitaro had harbored the desire to secretly date other women behind her back, there was no possible way that he could have slept around on her, anyway. The simple fact of the matter was that there were no other women at all here at the hidden oasis for him to do it _with_.

Except for Su, of course. But since Kaolla couldn't have children, that theory didn't hold water for even a second. Besides, with the skimpy outfits that the Molmol woman always wore, Nyamo knew that she would have noticed any suspicious bulges like _that_.

With regards to the little girl in question, both Keitaro and Nyamo already knew that since they had been treating Kaolla's adopted child as one of their own children for so long, anyway, all that this new knowledge about her paternity would do was make their bond with the tiny tot even stronger. Besides, being a bona-fide daughter of Keitaro's, the girl couldn't really be classed as an adoptee, anyway. She had already been classed as family – now she was genuinely one of theirs, for which Keitaro, Nyamo and Su all felt a profound sense of gratitude.

The melancholy father-once-more hadn't been sitting in reflectful seclusion for long before he was interrupted from his reverie by a visit from three of his previously acknowledged - _and planned!_ - kids – Masayuki, Little Naru and Kimiaki, to be precise. Upon turning his head and sighting the trio as they moved out through the open doorway in the smoothed stone wall to the rear of his chair, Keitaro noticed that all three of his eldest natural children looked to be strangely subdued and nervous for some as yet unknown reason.

_So much for some peace and quiet for a few moments so I can think this through,_ he mumbled silently to himself, standing up momentarily to swing his chair around so that it was now facing the doorway and his approaching cluster of kids. Sitting back down again, he raised up his right hand in a passably cheery greeting.

"Hi, guys. Why the long faces? What's up?"

"Hi, Dad," young Masayuki mumbled back to him, looking most uncomfortable at having to be the spokesman for the trio. "Can I – _um_ – have a word with you?"

"Sure, Masayuki. What's on your mind?"

Masayuki shuffled his foot, and then stole a guilty look at the equally apprehensive looking twins. _"Um-?"_ he began, then stopped speaking again. "Well, you see…?"

_Uh-oh?_ Keitaro thought, his forehead creasing in a frown. _This was all I needed. Just what have this bunch got up to now?_

"Okay, spill the beans," he ordered his oldest son firmly, fixing him with a no-nonsense look that made the boy squirm even more. "Out with it. Who did what, this time?"

The guilty looking trio exchanged glances once more, before the sweating Masayuki finally spoke up.

"It's Little Motoko, Dad. We can't find her anywhere. We all searched and searched all over the oasis, but she's not here!"

That statement from his nine-year-old son caused Keitaro to sit up and take notice of them in a hurry. "What do you mean, she's not here?" Keitaro repeated in an alarmed tone, leaning forward in his chair, a disturbed look on his face. "Have you tried searching for her at the cave she sometimes hangs out in, the one on the other side of the lake?"

"Ah – _no,"_ Masayuki admitted, a sheepish look on his tanned face at their omission. "When we saw Mutsumi-san and Tama-chan fall into the lake, we came back here with them instead of going over there for a look as we were going to do," he hurriedly explained to his now skeptical looking father. "But we do think that we know where she's gotten to now…" his voice faded away into another uncomfortable silence.

"Well? Speak up," Keitaro prompted him, a sinking feeling in his stomach that he wasn't going to like the answer to his question one bit.

"Um, okay. Little Shinobu-chan found this note in Motoko-chan's room on her bed while she was searching our house for her," Masayuki nervously told his father, thrusting out the piece of paper in his right hand for Keitaro to take. "I swear, Dad, we had no idea that she was going to do anything like this! It's not our fault!"

"I'll be the judge of that," Keitaro grimly warned him, glancing down at the note. "Okay, let's just see…"

As Keitaro read the neatly printed note, all of the blood drained from his suddenly soaking wet face, his already wide eyes expanded even more with shock, and he began to shake like a leaf.

_To my family,_

_If you are reading this note, something has gone wrong and you will probably never see me again. I will have failed in my mission. If that is so, then please know that I went with Keitaro-__Otōsan__ and Su-__Okāsan__ to rescue Motoko-sama and the others from the explosion. I am sorry that I was bad and had to leave you in secret, but I wanted to see the real Motoko Aoyama-sama once just in case you couldn't save her._

_If I get left behind in the past I will try to make it back to Pararakelse Island if I survive. But if I don't come back, please let Little Shinobu-chan have my red yukata, and tell Su-__Okā__san and Nyamo-__Okā__san that that they were great mothers to me, and that I love everybody, and I will never ever forget you all._

_And Keitaro-__Otōsan, you were the best Otōsan ever._

_I am sorry for causing you all trouble by hiding in the time machine._

_I love you all so much!_

_Goodbye,_

_From Motoko-chan. XXXX_

Next second, Keitaro's aghast scream of _"HOLY SHIIIT!!"_ echoing out from the summit of the mesa sent at least three black streams of bats spiralling forth prematurely from hidden cracks in the rock faces of the craggy stone tower, the tiny flying insectivores fleeing in panic up into the vastness of the twilight desert sky.


	11. Chapter 11

_Heyo. My apologies for the long wait for this chapter. I finished it ages ago. In explanation, I've been waiting until I had completed updates for ALL of my stories before posting it and them in one go._

_Anyway, here (at long last!) is:_

-:-:-:-:-:-

**LOVE HINA: DOOMSDAY  
**_**CHAPTER ELEVEN**_

By Doctor-T

-:-:-:-:-:-

Upon being told of his errant daughter's exceedingly unauthorized stowaway time travel trip, Keitaro's stress level - quite high enough already after finding out from Su about the new, heretofore totally unplanned and unsuspected natural child that he had somehow managed to father without his conscious knowledge _or_ his consent – instantly went rocketing to stratospheric heights. Ten seconds after receiving the bad news, the shocked father had made it down from the balcony to the living quarters, setting a new speed record in the process. Once there, he then lost no time in stammering out to Nyamo and Su what had happened to their missing girl.

Once the grim tale had been relayed on to his wife and best friend, pandemonium ensued. Su, tears streaming down her cheeks, immediately raced for the launch hanger to check inside her time machine for any evidence of Little Motoko's earlier presence there. Simultaneously, Keitaro sent Sarah, Masayuki and the twins off with Tama-chan and a plenitude of torches to check on the far distant aforementioned cave, just in case Motoko-chan had changed her mind about stowing away and gone around the lake to her isolated training base after all.

Even as he got things moving, Keitaro prayed to every god he had ever heard of that she had indeed done just that. But knowing Little Motoko's predilection for carrying out her plans, no matter what the obstacles were barring its path to fruition, he really didn't hold out much hope of there being _that_ happy an ending to this desperate situation.

Naru and Mutsumi, having heard the sudden commotion, came running towards the spacious lounge along the hallway that led to their new rooms. The concerned pair arrived on the frenetic scene just in time to see and somehow dodge the stampede of kids who were precipitatiously leaving the room via the same doorway they were about to use.

"Guys, I heard shouting," Naru worriedly inquired, turning back to face her hosts after first giving the retreating backs of the children a confused stare. Coming to a halt, her startled eyes flickered back and forth between Keitaro and Nyamo's pale, distraught faces. "What's going on? And was that the real Sarah McDougal that I just saw, then, Keitaro? Su told me earlier about her recreating a lifelike copy of Sarah, but no robot could possibly be that real looking – could it?"

"Yes, it can," Keitaro responded, his voice sounding tight and strained to the ears of the new arrivals. "That was Sarah-A, Su's – oh, look, Naru, I'll fill you in on her later! Right now we've got a situation on our hands!"

As she heard that foreboding announcement from her host, the worried expression returned to Naru's face. "A situation?" she urgently prompted him. "Keitaro, what exactly is going on?"

"And are you all right, Kei-kun?" Mutsumi asked with concern, not failing to notice the haunted look in his eyes. Not to mention the tears flowing from Nyamo's ones, as well.

"No, no, I'm not, Mutsumi," Keitaro replied, slumping down on the couch next to his weeping wife and taking her into his arms to try to give her some much needed comfort. "This is what's happened-"

After getting the rundown on the dire situation from the more-than-visibly upset head of the household, both newcomers also flopped down onto a seat next to each other, concern etched onto their own faces at this totally unforeseen bad news.

"_Oh, crap! Oh, crap!"_ Naru gasped out. "Are you absolutely sure that's what happened to her, Keitaro?"

"Pretty much," he answered, handing over the note that young Masayuki had given him, for Naru and Mutsumi to read. "I've just now sent our oldest kids off to check the cave on the far side of the lake where Little Motoko sometimes trains at, but after seeing this…?" He shrugged his shoulders helplessly. "Well, things certainly don't look good."

_"Ohmygod!" _Naru exclaimed, her eyes widening, the note that she was reading having just jogged her memory. During her last minute rescue from certain doom in 2002, she recalled having caught a momentary glimpse through the thick, swirling smoke in Su's room, of a third and much smaller figure exiting the time machine just after Keitaro and Su had done so. And now Keitaro's anguished words had just confirmed it to her – the tiny figure she had seen must have been their missing girl.

"Keitaro, Nyamo, I think that I saw a girl back in Su's jungle room at the Hinata Apartments just before you – _ah_ – put me to sleep, Keitaro," the teen then slowly admitted, a guilty look appearing on her face at not having brought the subject up before. "She came out of the flying thing you rescued me in, and then vanished into the smoke. I never saw her again after that, so I thought that I might have been imagining things…"

"_What? You saw Motoko-chan, Naru?"_ Keitaro yelled in surprise, his head jerking upwards again, Nyamo's doing the same. _"In Su's old room at the Hinata Apartments?"_

"Yes, I…I think so. Well, the girl who I saw must have been her." Then the hazel brunette's expression changed to one of anguish as she realized what Keitaro and Su's rescue of her had cost them. "Oh, god, no? Keitaro, Nyamo, I'm so sorry! You lost a child while saving me!"

The ashen-faced Naru buried her face in her hands, feeling like total crap once more. As she noticed her friend's distress, Mutsumi slid over on the seat and slipped her arms tightly around the guilt-laden girl once again.

"No, no, Naru-san, you mustn't think like that," the turtle lady solemnly declared, cradling Naru's tearful face on her near shoulder as if she were a child. "It's not your fault! Who would have thought that anything like this would even happen to us? And when it did, you had no idea that you were even going to be rescued, let alone that a child would stow away on Kei-kun and Su-san's transport, and then get left behind!"

Seeing Naru's distress, Nyamo Urashima, despite her own misery, immediately got up from her seat next to her husband and hurried over to Naru's couch to help Mutsumi comfort her conscience-stricken friend.

"Don't cry, Naru," the Pararakelse beauty gently consoled the crying teen, hugging her cheek-to-cheek as well, their trickling tears intermingling in shared sorrow. "Keitaro and I agree that you are in no way to blame for Motoko-chan's plight. And I'm sure that Su agrees with us, too."

"Th-thanks, guys," Naru choked, looking across at her concerned hostess, her reddened, moisture-filled eyes meeting Nyamo's kindly but no-less-upset ones with difficulty. "But…I still can't help feeling a little guilty about it. You came back through time to save us, to save me, and you lost one of your children in the process. Was I – am I really worth _that_ much of a sacrifice to you?"

Tactfully, neither Nyamo nor Keitaro answered that sobering question with a straight yes or no answer.

"Like I just said, Naru, it's not your fault," Nyamo merely repeated. "Little Motoko chose to do this of her own free will, without our knowledge or consent. As we had no idea at all she was going to stow away for the trip, there's nothing that we – and especially you - could have possibly done to prevent her from being left behind."

"Oh…okay, Nyamo…" Naru sniffled. "Thank you…for saying that."

"Did…Little Motoko-chan, wasn't it?…know what was going to happen to the Hinata Apartments just after you and Su-san arrived on the scene from the future to rescue us, Kei-kun?" Mutsumi abruptly asked, a thoughtful expression appearing on her face.

"Yes, she did," Keitaro responded, clearly puzzled as to why their conversation had suddenly taken this particular turn. "All of our kids know the story of how the Hinata Apartments were destroyed and why Su and I have to live hidden away here at the oasis. So, what exactly are you getting at here, Mutsumi?"

"Er, what exactly am I saying here? _Um _– oh, yes! My point is your little girl, Motoko-chan, knew in advance that the atomic explosion was imminent, Kei-kun," the turtle girl pointed out to her despondent audience. "So don't you think she would have previously thought up some alternative escape plan to get far enough away from the apartments before it happened, should she be unlucky enough to get left behind when you departed again?"

"Well, maybe," Keitaro dubiously conceded. "But how in the heck does an elementary school age girl hope to outrun an atomic blast in less than two minutes? It's impossible!"

"Well, what about those flying escape thingies that Su-san told me about earlier?" Mutsumi pressed him. "Do you think that maybe Motoko-chan could have got on board one of them in time to save herself?"

After hearing their watermelon-loving friend's optimistic 'what if' scenario, Keitaro and Nyamo exchanged speculative, wide-eyed glances. _If only that was true…?_

"I have to admit that it's a possibility, Mutsumi," Keitaro finally stated, his heart hammering with not entirely unfounded new hope for a happy ending to this fiasco, after all. "Su did design the rescue pods to save anyone they could find in the immediate vicinity of the apartments and then make a run for it to the safety zone behind the hills." The ex-_ronin_ then clutched at his tousled hair with both hands, his voice raised in a desperate plea._ "Oh, God!_ If Motoko really _did_ stow away back to 2002 with Su and I, I hope that she had the common sense to let herself be spotted by a pod? And if a pod did grab her, it managed to get far enough away from the apartments to stand a chance of surviving the blast?"

"If your little girl really did travel back with you to rescue us, there's still a chance that she's still alive back in 2002, Kei-kun," Mutsumi prompted him, certainty in her eyes and voice. "And there's only one way that you're going to find out for sure."

"You're right, Mutsumi." Keitaro then turned his head to face Nyamo, looking down into her tear streaked, dark blue eyes.

"Sweetie, if it turns out that Naru was right and she really did see Little Motoko in Su's old room, there's no way I can just sit here and do nothing about it," he declared in a determined tone, trying hard to project an optimistic face, and not doing all that good a job of it, unfortunately. "I'm definitely going to go back to 2002 with Su in the time machine to look for her. We'll do out very best to save her, but…_um...?" _He clutched at his wife's dainty brown hands, and steeled his voice. "Well, we also may have to prepare ourselves for the for the fact that Motoko-chan may not have - oh, never mind! I'm going, regardless of the odds of success, just as soon as Su gets back and we can fire up the time machine again!"

_That's just like you, Keitaro,_ the morose Naru mused silently as her anxiety-stricken hosts hugged each other tight. _Always ready and willing to go the extra mile for others, no matter what the risk to your own self. And now that you've fully matured into a real man, somehow I can't help thinking that there's nothing that you can't accomplish any more…_

_Damn, damn, damn, damn! Why couldn't I have just said those four little words to make you mine, back when I had the chance?_

…_I love you, Keitaro…!_

-:-:-:-:-:-

Ten minutes later, the still visibly upset Molmol woman arrived back in the spacious sitting room in the center of their living quarters, her woebegone demeanor showing that the news she was bearing had to be bad.

"It's true, Kei-Baby, Nyamo," Su confirmed to the unspoken question of her friends and family, tears still trickling down her smooth cheeks at what she had discovered. "I hate to say this, but Motoko-chan really _was_ on board our time machine when we made the jump back to 2002. I've just checked out the time machine, and I found where she was hiding out in the underfloor tool locker." Su held up a small, cylindrical object for all to see. "Lookies! She left this behind on the floor."

At that final confirmation of the bad news, Nyamo immediately burst out into tears again, and Keitaro had never felt more like turning on his own waterworks than at that moment, also.

"Oh, Kaolla, I'm so sorry!" the Pararakelse woman cried out as she and Su hugged each other tightly. "Our poor little girl!"

But Keitaro had to be strong for his wife and Su's sakes, so instead of giving way to despair, he fought back his own tears and raised his head up from his hands to stare at the used anti-radiation injection in the Molmol woman's outstretched right hand.

"Well, at least Motoko-chan had the sense to give herself an anti-radiation shot. So, if she somehow managed to survive the nuclear explosion, she shouldn't die of radiation poisoning from it, at any rate," he stated with forced cheer, trying hard to find some reason – _any_ reason - to still remain optimistic about their six-year-old kendoist's admittedly slim chances of survival. "And it's not over yet – not by a long shot! We _do_ have a working time machine, remember? We _can_ and _will_ save her, if I have to spend the rest of my life making jumps back there, trying!"

As she listened to the grim determination in the older Keitaro's voice, Naru once again felt a surge of pride at the strength and maturity he had developed over the intervening years. But then, the unwelcome knowledge that she had lost him to another girl intruded into Naru's mind, abruptly reducing her to regretful despondency once more.

"Oh, my? That's the spirit, Kei-kun," the equally impressed Mutsumi enthused, clapping her hands in approval. "You and Su can save her, I know that you can! After all, you've already saved me, and Naru-san, too, haven't you?"

Keitaro nodded, then looked down at his Pararakelse wife as she moved forward to his side, to clutch tightly her husband's near arm.

"I'll…I'll be really worried about you both if you and Su do risk another time travel trip, but if there's any chance – _any chance at all_ - that Motoko-chan has survived, you both have my blessing to go," Nyamo hesitantly told him and Su. "Please, please save her, Keitaro?" Her gaze then moved from her husband's face to meet the Molmol woman's sea-green eyes in appeal. "And please bring them both safely back to me, Su."

"Don't worry, Sweetie, we will," Keitaro promised his wife, Kaolla nodding concurrence to his words as well. "I swear, if Little Motoko's still alive, we'll bring her safely back home."

"Scout's honor," Su promised, flashing the sign.

_I hope…?_ They both added under their breath.

Even at this late stage in the proceedings, Keitaro kept forcing himself not to think the unthinkable – that Little Motoko had been caught up in the nuclear funeral pyre, after all, and she was now nothing more than a scattering of random radioactive atoms, spread far and wide across the blasted landscape of their youth.

"Thank you both." And then a subtle warning tone entered into Nyamo's voice. "Keitaro, Kaolla, while you're gone, try not to take any unnecessary risks, okay?"

"Hey, Nyamo, it's _me_, remember?" Su replied, giving the still worried looking wife a brave smile and a thumbs-up. "We'll make it – all three of us!"

"Well, then, now that it's decided, what are we waiting for," Keitaro prompted Su; hurriedly pecking Nyamo goodbye on her lips and then jumping back up to his feet, ready and eager to get their new rescue mission underway without further ado. "Let's fire up your time machine right now, and we'll go back to 2002 and start searching for Little Miss Imp!"

"I'm with you, Kei-Baby, but there's just one problem - we _can't_ leave straight away," Su pointed out to them, a frustrated expression appearing on her face as she thought of all of the vitally necessary preparations that had to be done first. "It'll take me almost a week to check for damage from the mission that we just got back from, work through the maintenance list, run diagnostics on the computer flight, navigation and sensor systems, and refuel," she then quickly elaborated, jerking her right thumb back in the general direction of the hanger complex. "It's far too dangerous _not_ to take all of these precautions, first. Unless you're planning on leading us on a one-way suicide mission, of course?"

"What? _A week, you say?"_ the fidgety father blurted out, waving his arms with agitation at the unexpected and most unwelcome delay to their rescue of their daughter. "Why that long?"

"Like I said before, plotting a time jump isn't like catching a bus into town," Su explained, her demeanor showing that she, too, was none too happy at being unable to take instant action to rectify the tragic situation. "Sure, I did leave the other end of my captive wormhole back in 2002, it's entrance shrunk down to microscopic size until we need it again, so under normal circumstances the trip back to then shouldn't be a problem. But for safety's sake, I _have_ to give the time machine a good going over first. Or do you really want to take the risk of something shorting out while we're back in 2002, leaving us all stranded there? And if that were to happen, you know as well as I do what the cops will do to us if they catch us! Japan still has the death penalty even in this day and age, you know!"

Keitaro shifted uneasily in his seat. "Okay, I understand that we're still on their most wanted list," he conceded, a cold chill tingling up his spine at the frightening thought of being executed as a nuclear terrorist by the Justice System of his much missed country of birth. "But it's Motoko-chan's life that is at stake here! Can't you speed up the maintenance, or something, Su?"

"_Maybe._ But even if I can't, I wouldn't worry too much about our departure being delayed, Kei-Baby," Su told him, forcing her worried mind to logically think their situation through. "The good news is that since we have a working time machine, it doesn't really matter what day we leave here to go back to 2002. That's because - provided that my new calculations for our return journey are correct, of course - we'll still arrive at the _exact_ time and place we need to be to rescue Motoko-chan."

"How…just how do you figure that, Su?" Nyamo asked, her brow furrowing with puzzlement. "In that case, surely a whole week would have gone by in 2002, as well as here in 2027?"

"Nup! Just because a week may go by for us in the future, _doesn't_ mean that we have to let a whole week also go by after the explosion in the past," Su elucidated, putting on her lecturers hat. "And here's why, Nyamo-Sweetie. Since Kei-Baby and I made it safely home in one piece from our last mission, I now possess proven space-time co-ordinates to the exact location of the Hinata Apartments back in 2002. Which means that, after doing a bit of extra math with those true co-ordinates, I should be able to plot a course back the few extra days that we'll have to travel into the past, no trouble. So, even if we do have to wait an extra week until the servicing and repairs to my time machine are completed, we'll still arrive on location in time to rescue Motoko-chan – although on this trip it would be a very good idea for us not to reappear directly above where Hinata Hot Springs used to be. As distressing as this sounds, _'radioactive hell'_ is the term I would use to describe ground zero just after the detonation, you see. My time machine is fully shielded from atomic radiation, so we'll be safe enough searching for Motoko-chan from inside it. However, even with the injections and radiation suits we've got, I wouldn't recommend us attempting to do any poking around in the ruins for her on foot."

"All right, we'll play it your way," the now somewhat mollified father conceded, looking a mite deflated at the unavoidable delay to their mercy mission, but realizing that Su was absolutely correct with what she had just said. Safety _did_ come first. "Do what you need to do, and don't take any shortcuts doing it. And Su, if there's anything that I can do to help speed things up for you, don't hesitate to ask me right away, okay?"

"No worries, Kei-Baby. I'm onto it as of now!"

Turning, Su ran from the room, heading back towards the underground hanger. After finding out about this particularly cruel twist of fate, an all-nighter running diagnostics on board her esoteric craft in the cavernous launch bay was _definitely_ on the cards.

-:-:-:-:-:-

It wasn't until lunchtime the next day that Keitaro saw Su again, and that was only because he had volunteered to take the hard working Molmol woman her well-earned lunch. Quite apart from wondering why she hadn't made an appearance at breakfast this morning – an unheard of occurrence - the anxious father also had an ulterior motive for his altruistic action. He was busting for a report on Su's progress so far through the formidable maintenance schedule that had to be completed before they could risk another trip back into the past.

Upon entering the spacious hanger, the lunchbox-toting Keitaro wasn't at all surprised to espy through his sleep-deprived eyes, that a certain small, blonde pre-teen was also present. Sarah was standing upon the uppermost curved antenna of the time machine, which was currently fully extended on its telescoping rod, her slender shape silhouetted against the luminous glow from a bank of roof lights.

Upon arriving back from their expedition around the lake last night with his other kids, upon finding out where her mother had gone, Sarah had immediately departed for the launch bay to help Su out, without even taking time to eat her dinner first. Since Sarah had skipped breakfast this morning too, Keitaro and Nyamo had suspected that he would discover Kaolla's oldest daughter still hard at work on the time machine. So the ever-thoughtful Nyamo had packed a spare meal for her, also.

Their assumption had been correct. And by the looks of things, the blonde girl had remained on the job for the entire night and all morning, as well.

Sarah spotted Keitaro at the same time as he noticed her, and raised up her wrench-filled right hand in a weary though cheery greeting.

"Hi, dork – er, I mean, _Dad." _Then the artificial girl caught sight of just what her father figure was carrying with him, and she unconsciously licked her lips in a totally human manner. "Hey! Is that our lunch you brought with you, Keitaro?"

"Yup," Keitaro confirmed, grimacing at the annoying nickname, his mind as per usual not even registering that Sarah-A wasn't the original, human girl he had known in his youth. "And don't worry, we figured that you'd still be in here, so Nyamo made sure that I brought enough food for both your mother _and_ you."

"Yay! Thanks, I'm starving!" Sarah whooped. Then an expression of anxious concern abruptly appeared on her petite face at the mention of her third parent. "Oh, by the way, dor-_Dad_, how's Nyamo-mama bearing up?"

"She's pretty tired, but apart from that, Nyamo's as well as can be expected, Sarah," Keitaro called up to her in reply, his own eyes gritty from their shared lack of sleep through worry last night. "It's being unable to do anything to contribute to saving Motoko-chan that's the main problem with her, and myself, too, I think. At least Su can keep herself busy with the preparations for our rescue mission, while all that Nyamo and I can really do is sit here twiddling our thumbs and worrying ourselves sick for the next week or so."

"Oh…I see. Hey, after lunch, does she need me to go back to the house to help out with any chores or anything else that needs doing?" Sarah offered, looking suitably concerned. "I've just about finished up here."

"No, Naru and Mutsumi and the rest of my brat pack are all helping her out with the routine stuff, so you might as well carry on with what you're doing in here for Su. She needs all the help she can get to speed up the time of departure of our rescue mission." Keitaro then opened the king-sized _bento_ and lifted out a large, bulky food heater bag. "Here. You'd best have your lunch now, while it's still hot."

"You bet! I'm coming down right now!"

-:-:-:-:-:-

After leaving Sarah munching happily away on the extra-large western style burger with fries that Nyamo had packed for her, Keitaro went to look for Su. As expected, he found her ensconced in climate controlled comfort in the cockpit of the disk shaped time machine, sitting in the pilot's seat and busily tapping away on the very complex keyboard built into the curved control panel. Above Kaolla's blonde, ponytailed head, on the main data screen, was displayed an obviously incomplete mathematical formula of such length and complexity that Keitaro felt his brain begin to liquidify just through the simple act of looking at the dozen or so lines of esoteric symbols.

"Oh, hi, Kei-Baby," Su greeted him with a warm smile, looking around from her calculations, which she had been engrossed in, non-stop, for the last four hours. Then Kaolla's green eyes sparkled as she noticed what Keitaro was toting, and like Sarah had done, she licked her lips with enthusiastic anticipation of the feast to come. _"Yum!_ Chowtime, methinks? My hero!"

"Um, thanks, I guess. Well, Nyamo and I couldn't help noticing that both you and Sarah skipped breakfast this morning, _and _morning tea as well, so Nyamo made sure that I brought a double helping of lunch over to you and Sarah," Keitaro informed his radiant ex, setting the still heavy _bento_ down onto the nearest flat surface. "Hey, have you had any sleep at all since the night before last?"

"Nope. Don't need any, either – well, not just yet, anyway. But I _do_ need food, and plenty of it, if I hope to keep this pace up," Su hinted.

"Well, maybe you'd best take a meal break right now," Keitaro suggested with a grin, handing his best friend the remaining hot food bag out of the box. Then his smile morphed into a loud yawn.

"Whew! Excuse me. I didn't get much sleep myself last night, for obvious reasons."

"Thankies," Su enthused, grabbing the lunch bag and giving it a deep, appreciative sniff, savoring the aroma wafting out from within. After removing an electronic notepad and several abstruse looking micro tools from the seat next to her with her free hand, Su patted its comfortable surface in warm invitation.

"Here, Keitaro, take a load off. You look like you could fall over at any second, and I could do with some company while I eat. Oh, yeah. And I've got a couple of things that I best run past you right now, while I've got the chance."

"Oh? Okay, why not," Keitaro agreed, taking the Molmol woman up on her more than welcome offer of company. He slid down onto the well-padded co-pilot's seat he had used on their first trip back into the past, letting out a relaxed sigh as he lounged back in the luxurious comfort of the recliner.

"_Ahhhh_. That's better. I needed that. I've been on the go all morning around the house, what with Naru and Mutsumi and the other kids to sort out."

"I figured you would be," Su chuckled, unzipping the temperature-regulating heater bag. "Let's just see what Nyamo packed me – ooh, a super-sized chicken, cheese and banana-burger and fries! _Yum!"_

"So, what did you need to tell me? I'm all ears," Keitaro prompted his drooling friend, having first treated himself to another impromptu yawn and overhead arm stretch, his arms and fingers fully extended in tension-relieving bliss.

"Hold on, Kei-Baby," Su answered semi-inarticulately back to him through a large mouthful of hot burger. _"Mmmmm!_ I'd best eat up first, before this lovely grub goes cold…"

Keitaro grinned and settled back into his seat again, watching the crumbs fly as Kaolla chomped through her mountainous lunch. To the wistfully daydreaming dad, Su's table manners still brought back fond memories of her past behavior at the meals they had shared together in their youth, back when she was but a hyperactive teenager at the long gone Hinata Apartments. And judging by his current observation of her meal manners, it was more than obvious that the passing of the years hadn't dampened Su's appetite either, that was for sure.

"Right! First off, I'd best make this point clear to you," Su finally began, once the very last French fry had met the same fate as it's gulped down companions. _"'Buuurp!'_ Oh - _excuse me_."

"I hope that wasn't the point you needed to make," Keitaro smirked, shifting his hands from behind his ruffled hair to fan at the air in front of his face.

"_Heh_. No, that was just for emphasis. Listen, Kei-Baby, 'cause this is really important," Su then warned him, her facial expression and tone changing from mirth to deadly seriousness for once. "I've been doing some thinking, and I've come up with a potential problem with regards to our coming rescue mission. It's something that we both somehow overlooked before, but unless we're really careful, it has the potential to royally screw up our lives here in the future."

"Oh? And just what might that be, Su?" Keitaro asked, alarm appearing on his face as he paid the grim looking beauty his full attention.

"If we do succeed in rescuing any of our missing friends, it is imperative that we bring them back here to Pararakelse Island in the year 2027, to live with us from this time period onwards. We can't, under any circumstances, leave any of them with our younger selves back in 2002 as we had considered doing."

Keitaro frowned. "Why do you say that, Su," he then asked, assuming an air of puzzlement. "Wouldn't you have liked to have had Motoko and Shinobu and Kitsune and Kanako living with us here at the oasis right from the very start? I sure would've liked that to have happened!"

"Yes, actually I would have liked that, just as much as you. But just think about what them living at the oasis for the last twenty-five years would have meant with regards to our own lives here, Kei-Baby," the Molmol woman prompted him, her expression suggesting that the answer to his question should be blatantly obvious. "Maybe I'd best explain it to ya, just so there's no misunderstandings?"

"Yes, maybe you'd better," the perplexed Keitaro agreed, his brow still wrinkled with a querulous frown.

The reason behind Keitaro's confused demeanor was simple. During their upcoming new rescue mission to find Little Motoko, if he and Su did manage to rescue any of the other Hinata girls and then decide to drop the survivors off at Pararakelse Island back in 2002 instead of bringing them back to 2027, what could the problem with doing that possibly be? He sure couldn't think of any downside to having had a few more of their long-lost friends living with their younger selves and Tama-chan during their long years of exile-to-be.

Su took a deep breath. "Okies, here goes. As is already blatantly obvious to all concerned, you and I and Tama-chan, we've lived for most of our lives totally alone here at our oasis. Well, except for Nyamo and Gidget, of course, who discovered us totally by accident, over a decade after we had first arrived here. Oh, and after I rebuilt her, Robo-Sarah and then Sarah-A has been living with us here, too, as well. _'Ahem!'_ Anyway, twelve years ago you ended up marrying Nyamo and having a family with her. As for me, I spent years studying, experimenting, and then finally building and testing my time machine. Do you agree with my summation so far?"

"Yes," Keitaro cautiously affirmed. "That's the past twenty-five years of our lives here in a nutshell, I guess?"

"Well, now, imagine what might have happened if even so much as one of the other residents had managed to make it here to the oasis at any time during our already happened past. As an example, let's say that Shinobu somehow made it across the Pacific Ocean to Pararakelse Island, and that she joined us here at the oasis before Nyamo arrived."

"Go on…" Keitaro tentatively requested, not yet getting her point.

"Let's say that you fell in love with Shinobu, and married her instead of Nyamo. Now, how do you think you doing that would have changed our future, Kei-Baby? Would you still have the kids that you do now? Would you even have _any_ kids at all? What I'm trying to say is this - are you willing to take the chance of altering, possibly for the worse, the happy life with your loving family that you are lucky enough to have right now?"

That last comment of Su's did the trick. Keitaro's face paled as he began to mentally speculate on the unknown and potentially tragic consequences of them unintentionally changing their past in a way that could adversly affect their existence in the here-and-now.

"We know from our past history that not one of our friends managed to make it to our oasis since we've been here, except for Nyamo and Gidget," Su continued. "Well, up until yesterday, that is, when we deliberately brought Naru, Mutsumi and Kuro back here from twenty-five years ago. Us saving them and then bringing them back to 2027 in our time machine, thereby jumping the intervening years entirely, ensured that there was absolutely no chance of us having changed what we have already lived through on this island over the last quarter of a century. For if any of our friends were to arrive here even so late as the day before yesterday, it would change our past history. And doing that _has_ to be a no-no – for the sake of your marriage to Nyamo, especially. So to preserve the continuity of our past life here, I strongly suggest that we keep it that way," Su emphasized, finality in her voice.

"Oh – _crap._ You're right, of course, Su," Keitaro hurriedly agreed, mentally kicking himself for not picking up on this potentially life-altering point of hers right at the start. "I get it, now. We _can't_ risk bringing any of our friends to the oasis back in 2002, or at any other time right up until our first rescue trip yesterday, because if we do, it really _could_ change everything! And, believe me, there's _no way_ that I'm gonna risk losing Nyamo or anyone else in my family by doing anything that could jeopardize my meeting and marrying her!"

"Bingo, Kei-Baby. And here's yet another sobering fact for you to chew on. As you already know, I've been wondering for the past quarter of a century now just how we managed to survive that atomic blast in the first place," Su informed Keitaro, her tone quiet and thoughtful and the light of new understanding shining in her green eyes. "And now I know why."

"Well, Su, I've always put our fluky escape down to your piloting and engineering skills, and to sheer dumb luck," Keitaro responded, the grim look reappearing on his face as he unwillingly recalled the agonizing pain of the burns he had received. During their desperate flight from nuclear annihilation back in 2002, the expanding heat pulse from the exploding reactor had nearly cooked both of them alive before they had managed to outrun it.

"And it was, to a certain extent," Su agreed. "We _were_ lucky. But now I've deduced the key reason why we survived certain death back then, Kei-Baby. Listen, I've known ever since we first escaped from the Hinata Apartments twenty-five years ago, that my _mecha-tamago_ and the two of us _should_ have been vaporized well before we could get far enough away from the nuclear detonation to stand any hope of survival. There just hadn't been enough time for us to reach a safe distance from its epicentre, even with the _mecha-tamago's_ booster rockets on overdrive. But by some miracle we _did_ manage to get just far enough away to survive. Just the fact that you and I are here talking right now is irrefutable confirmation that the impossible somehow happened."

"Well, don't keep the reason a secret," Keitaro pressed the tanned beauty. "Spill the beans!"

"Okies. Here's how it come about. We weren't killed because before my reactor blew up, we had already returned to the Hinata Apartments from the future in my time machine _and changed the time that the explosion happened_. Remember how I used the onboard zero-time field to slow the atomic pile meltdown to supercritical mass, and buy us a minute's extra time on site? Well, that vital extra minute that I managed to gain us for our rescue attempt _also_ gave our earlier selves on my _mecha-tamago_ one minute more to get away, enabling them to fly just far enough away from ground zero to preserve their – no, _our_ lives. This in turn, enabled us to escape to a place of safety, and then develop the time travel technology that we needed to return to 2002 to save our younger versions lives in the first place. Oh, yeah - and Naru and Mutsumi and Kuro this time, as well."

"So you're saying that if you hadn't managed to figure out a way for us to travel in time, both you and I would have _also_ died in the blast twenty-five years ago, just like all of the others, bar Shinobu, did? At least, until we rescued them, that is?" Keitaro asked in slack-jawed astonishment, his brain feeling as if it might melt as he struggled to grasp that mind-bending concept.

"Yup. You got it."

"But…but that's a _huge_ paradox," he protested. "You're telling me that the only way we survived the atomic explosion in the first place was because of our rescue mission from the future, during which you managed to delay your nuclear reactor from blowing up for an extra minute? But we would have had to somehow survive the blast at its original time of detonation, anyway, for us to escape to Pararakelse Island, to then mount the rescue mission from 2027, which _gave_ us that extra minute! That doesn't make any sense!"

"That's why they call it a paradox," Su brightly stated. "I can't explain the mechanics behind it, either. But it happened. Like I said just before, you and I being here right now is proof positive that my theory is right."

"Yeah," Keitaro conceded, trying hard to prevent himself developing the headache he could just that moment feel coming on. "So…what you're saying is, by some strange universal twist of fate or decree, we both were always _meant_ to survive your nuclear reactor blowing up, then? That's…_wild!"_

"Yup. Sure looks like it to me, Kei-Baby," Su agreed, an awestruck look on her own face. "To paraphrase another quote, _'the universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we _can_ imagine.'"_

"That I know all too well, Su," Keitaro seconded, real feeling in his voice, a chill running up his spine at the inherent truth of her statement. "After what I've been though in my life, I'm just about ready to believe that _anything_ is possible."

"_Ditto_. So, just to sum up what I've deduced, if we are foolish enough to bring any of our friends back to the oasis to live with our younger selves in 2002, there's a good chance that their presence will interfere with my successfully developing working time travel technology, or even prevent me from starting my research into time travel in the first place," Su expounded. "And, as you now know, for the sake of our own younger selves survival back in 2002 and the new lives we have since then created for ourselves here at the hidden oasis, nothing must be allowed to interfere with or put a stop to the time travel rescue mission we went on yesterday. Because if I don't build a working time machine, then jump back to 2002 and slow down the speed of my nuclear reactor going supercritical, our younger selves and Tama-chan will die in the reactor explosion, twenty-five years ago! If that happens, all of the other residents of the Hinata Apartments except Shinobu will _also_ die permanently with us back in 2002, and our entire future life we have experienced here at the hidden oasis would never even have happened at all."

"_Oh, shit?"_ Keitaro gasped, his face as white as a sheet at the thought of everything that they had accomplished being erased from existence, leaving nothing behind, not even a memory.

"But wait, there's more! Here's one final unpleasant little fact to scare you, Kei-Baby. We did ourselves a real favor during yesterday's rescue mission, first by successfully managing to delay the reactor explosion, and then making it safely home to 2027. And not just for the obvious reasons we've just been discussing, either."

"Huh? W-what are you talking about now, Su?" Keitaro wanted to know. "I'm freaking out about this quite enough right now, thank you very much."

"We dodged a real nasty temporal trap by managing to escape from ground zero in 2002 back into the future, is what I mean. Check this out – if, after successfully delaying the reactor explosion for long enough to let our younger versions get away, you and I and Tama-chan had still gotten ourselves killed in 2002, the three of us would have then been permanently trapped in a quarter-century-wide, closed time loop! We would've been doomed to automatically keep reliving what we have already experienced up until yesterday - first escaping from Hinata Hot Springs to live for twenty-five years on Pararakelse Island, and then travelling through time back to 2002, where we'll die once again, but only _after_ the younger you and I have successfully escaped the nuclear blast to start the endlessly repeating cycle once more. And this _exact_ same scenario will keep happening to us over and over and over again, _forever."_

At that very moment, before the speechless, goose-bump covered father could even attempt to tell Kaolla of his relief at having avoided that particularly terrifying fate; a loud beeping sound snapped him back to reality. Glancing across at the control panel, Keitaro noticed that a green LED light was now pulsing on and off in an urgent, eye-catching rhythm, providing visual confirmation that something of import had just occurred.

"Ah, my search engine has had a positive hit," Su enthused, her eyes gleefully lighting up at having early success with the second project she had set in motion earlier on that morning. "Check this out for yet another stroke of luck for us, Kei-Baby. Lookies, I've already managed to track down some info on Shinobu!"

"Shinobu?" Keitaro exclaimed in turn, his weary eyes expanding with astonishment at this quite unanticipated minor miracle. His previous angst now totally forgotten, Keitaro sat bolt upright on his seat, leaned forward eagerly, and asked, "How on earth did you manage to achieve that so fast, Su? I mean, get a lead on Shinobu after all of this elapsed time?"

"Easy, Kei-Baby. Since, thanks to Mutsumi, we know now that Shinobu managed to survive and was in Yokohama at the time Hinata Hot Springs was destroyed, I decided to see if I could find any further information on what became of her after the disaster. So during a break from my calculations, I set up an automatic search for her using the time machine's onboard computer. I set the search engine to scan public information databases, such as news archives, government records and other media in Japan from 2002 onwards, using Shinobu's full name, age and date of birth as keywords. Okies, let's just see what came up!"

Sure enough, Su's Internet search had scored a bull's-eye on the long lost and much missed young bluenette. However, nothing could have prepared the expectant pair for the shocking news concerning Shinobu's fate, detailed in the article now being displayed on the huge main screen in front of them.

The piece in question was an archived newspaper article from twenty-five years ago – in fact, it had been posted not long after the nuclear explosion that had so radically altered their former lives.

As Keitaro and Su read in rapidly dawning horror the online obituary – for that was what it was - their previously increasingly light-hearted state of mind crashed and burned into the depths of despair once again.

'_The body of a Miss Shinobu Maehara was discovered yesterday afternoon, hanging from a rope inside a closet in her bedroom at her Mother's house. The cause of death is strongly suspected to be suicide. Understandably, her mother and her estranged father are both too distraught to comment at this time.'_

'_Miss Shinobu Maehara was a fourteen year old High School student, who used to attend Kanagawa Prefectural High School in Hinata City, before the city was almost completely destroyed by-''_

"_Oh, shit-!"_ Keitaro whispered, the tears of uncontainable grief welling up in his eyes abruptly blurring the following words on the screen into unreadable streaks. "Not her…not like this? Oh, Shinobu!"

Su's empty food bag hit the floor with a soft thud. Then, as her own tears burst forth, the distraught Molmol woman rose up out of her seat, took one unsteady step forward, and then collapsed down into Keitaro's arms, burrowing her face tightly into his stiff right shoulder in her desperate need for his comfort and support. Instinctively, Keitaro wrapped his trembling arms securely around Su, cradling her tightly against his rigid chest.

"Shinobu's dead," Su sobbed in a broken tone, the twin streams of her hot, salty tears soaking down into the front of Keitaro's shirt in an expanding pool of liquid warmth. "But I don't understand! Why…why did she do it, Kei-Baby? _Why?"_

"I…guess Shinobu must have thought that everyone else living at the apartments, including you and I, had died in the explosion, Su," Keitaro managed to answer, forcing his shocked and numbed mind to try to think coherently despite the suffocating black blanket of desolation, brought on by this latest bit of singularly bad news, that had engulfed them both. "And with us all gone, her grief and loneliness must have been too much for her to bear. Maybe…maybe Shinobu got it into her head that she had nothing to live for any more…?"

"_Oh, no, no, no! Poor Shinobu!"_

"Um…Su? Su…I think, well, we can't tell any of the others about Sh-Shinobu's…fate…just yet, especially Nyamo. On top of Little Motoko being missing, having to deal with this as well would devastate her," Keitaro then stated, his voice strained and choked up with raw emotion. "Nyamo and Shinobu were best friends way back then, remember? And quite apart from that, we both know that if Naru were to find out about what happened to Shinobu, she'd insist on accompanying us back to 2002 to try to help us save her." He set his jaw resolutely. "You and I, we _have_ to go back to try to save Little Motoko and Shinobu, but I'm _not_ prepared to risk the lives of anyone else on our coming rescue mission, Su. And that is _non-negotiable."_

The distressed Molmol woman turned her sorrowful eyes up to meet the pain-filled ones of her ex, and she nodded in tearful concurrence to his compassionate suggestion. It _would_ be best for them to keep the tragic news of the demise of the cute little cook under wraps, for the time being, anyway. Besides, if they did succeed in reaching Shinobu back in 2002 before she could take the ultimate, irrevocable step to alleviate her loneliness and grief at the supposed death of all of her dear friends whom had been residing at the Hinata Apartments, her self-inflicted death could easily be prevented.

Their success would mean that no one else in 2027 would ever need to know about the tragedy they had so auspiciously averted, because it would never have even happened in the first place.

"You're…you're right, Kei-Baby. _'Sniff!'_ For the sake of the others, this has to be our little secret. But I swear to you right now that I'm gonna do everything in my power to save poor Shinobu, as well as Motoko-chan!"

Keitaro adjusted his hold on Su so he could take her trembling hands in his own no-less unsteady ones, giving them a reassuring squeeze.

"And I'm with you on this too, Su," he solemnly vowed through the lump half-blocking his throat, his voice strained, but full of strength of purpose. "One hundred percent, all of the way!"

-:-:-:-:-:-

_Author's Note:_

_I'm not too sure when I'll be updating this story next, so sorry about the cliffhanger ending. I have a lot of other stories to complete and post. But I will write more chapters when I can find the time to do a proper job on it._


End file.
